Thursday Nov 28 2019
Finally a race themed movie with a real plot. Except this is not just any plot,
features wonderful larger than life but real life characters that played out this famous battle for racing supremacy.
From a socionmics standpoint, it is inevitable this would ahppen in 1966, the first ever flirtation of the DJIA with the never before seen level of 1.000. As Iococca puts it in the movie, baby boomers don't want to drive Dad's car. Hence the Mustang was created.
Ford attempted to buy Ferrari but was rebuffed. And as Lee put it, that was just a show to get a bailout from FIAT, which is what happened. Alerted to Ferrari's actual reacction and description of Ford, he replies, I want to win, I don't care what it costs. I would be hard to create a better line up of characters
Carroll Shelby – winner of LeMans in 1959 and car builder himself
Ken Miles – creator of the Cobra and made the GT 40 a real winner
The cast at Ford including Henry and Bebee, both as arrogant as can be, or as Enzo Ferrari put it, he is Ford II not Ford I
Enzo Ferrari – as Shelby put it in his eulogy to Enzo, the only guy who ever got to run his very own car company
We know nothing of the marriages of all the other men, but we learn a great deal about the family of Ken MIles, Mollie and son Peter. Mollie is very well played by Caitriona Balfe. I suspect this is to attract the wives and girl friends of guys likely to attend the movie themselves.
Yes go see this one at the theater, the Lucas Dolby sound alone is worth the admission. And the race scenes are great. Dozens of digital artists are in the credits as I am sure they could never find this many of the original cars.
The problem with the other big three race movies that come to mind
Winning with Paul ewman
Le Mans with Steve McQueen
Grand Prix with James Garner
is the lack of plot and character development, particularly in LeMans.Here the characters are everything, the cars are the props.
High Noon was the first western to win an Oscar for Best Picture. The reason was that it featured a real theme of Civil Obedience and real characters who reflected just that. One by one the town deserts Sheriff Will Kane who tries to raise a posse at different locales. .Finally left alone, we see Kane hand write his last will and testament.
l wished for more technical detail but there is a good deal of that, particularly regarding the replacement brakes.
IMDB estimates the budget at $97 M and I do not doubt that.It has already grossed $62 M.
It rates a 8.3 on IMDB which is really really high.I quite agree.
Check out the Wiki 196 LeMans article for background
Pick an early matinee, we went to the Huebner Oaks which has the best theater seats I have ever experienced.
Professor Elam 
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