Somewhere out there is the perfect line… the perfect racing line, the perfect biopic line, the perfect period piece line… not everyone can see it. Most can’t. This movie couldn’t. It’s an unfocused sprint spread across a country mile where the driver flails wildly across the center line without finding an end to this tortured analogy.

I don’t know who this movie’s for or really what it’s all about. Not, perhaps, until the very end. Only then did I figure out why a theoretical biopic was so torturously focused on a very slim segment of a man’s life. Maybe if I knew more about racing history or Enzo Ferrari going in, I could have known what made this slice of life so critical. I didn’t… so I spent the majority of time wondering why in hell we were so focused on this boring, uneventful drivel.

The flick stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari as he goes about his life being the owner of a fancy pants car-go-fast company. Who is Enzo Ferrari? I guess a rich guy who owns a car company who had a wife played by Penelope Cruz and a mistress played by Shailene Woodley. Beyond that, who knows? This movie doesn’t really stop to ponder who he is, how he got here, and why he matters.

I know it’s the car… and Enzo Ferrari is the bad guy in Ford vs Ferrari… but other than that, I guess I know he cheated on his wife and he built fast cars. I know about the car… more or less (I once confused a Ferrari with a Fierro… but, to be fair, it was under a tarp and only its red nose and its logo were showing). This movie taught me very, very little.

There’s (eventually) a race at the end of the film that was mainly made up of a bunch of red cars jockeying for position. The drivers don’t matter, the goal doesn’t matter… but there’s a moment of such shocking brutality at the end that almost make this movie work. Probably people in the know knew what was coming but ignoramuses who confuse Pontiacs with Ferraris didn’t.

I should hate the movie more but I’ll confess to retroactively getting the point well enough to say the flick can work. I just wish it was more focused and had a better through-line or point. Maybe inform us of the event at the end of the film so we’d know what we were working towards.

This movie wasn’t for me. I’m not enough of a car nut, Michael Mann nut, or random bio-pic of some guy with a car company nut to care. The movie’s structure and script weren’t enough to buy me in. Only a bit of masterful shock value near the end saved any of this. And some Penelope Cruz.

Score: 71