Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend

Frank Grillo is the highlight of this movie, can't fault him, great job with what he had to work with.

How do directors manage to make fast cars look like they are going slow. The race scenes between the Ferrari and Lamborghini are by far the worst filmed race scene I have seen. Who choreographed and directed that scene? Really? That's what you came up with? It's trash. Directors, take note. Go watch the opening scene to a movie called the Cannonball Run from 1981, yes that right, 1981. They made that Lamborghini look fast, sound fast, how a Lamborghini should be. To this day, that one scene is better than what you all came up with.

If your not a car enthusiast or don't care about Lamborghini this movie will bore you to death. I stayed with it because of my passion for Lamborghini and Ferrari, and the legendary story of how Lamborghini began.

It has its moments, good moments, but the badly written and horridly directed moments outweigh the good ones.

Here's the problem: "Ford vs. Ferrari" was damn good, and set a high bar for a story about the development of these cars - and the clashes of competitive personalities - in the 60s. So when "Lamborghini..." fails to develop any of the characters at all and draw the viewer in to engage with and pick sides in the rivalries, we're left watching a handful of cartoon characters in which we simply aren't invested. While I've never seen any footage of Lamborghini (and thus can't comment on the accuracy of the performance here), Grillo played him like a soap-opera central-casting Italian. And aside from the pure animus between Ferrari and Lamborghini, engineering a new thing is actually very exciting - it's difficult and arduous and maddening and exhausting and incredibly rewarding. But did we get any of that? Not really, only a few clips here and there of a motor and a couple of body panels and almost nonexistent characters who - in real life - would have sweated bullets in doing what they did. The whole thing comes off as a pastiche, and just makes me want to read the book upon which it was allegedly based to find its heart and soul. And we didn't even get enough great car porn to boot.

A plot summary for this film is pretty much unnecessary as the title of the film tells you what this film is about so let's look at what lies beneath...

The film opens up with Enzo Ferrari and Ferruccio Lamborghini (in the early 90's) racing each other....erm...on some road somewhere. This race occurs throughout the film and is interspersed at varying points throughout the story. Some may dismiss this as pointless and making no sense and to a certain extent I agree; however, it could also act as a metaphor showcasing their one upmanship, their jockeying for position and ultimately their rivalry. I'm not entirely sure I'm on the right track with that train of thought, but it's the only way I could make, at least, some sense of this film.

Anyways, looking at the main focus of the film Ferruccio returns from WW2 and decides with his friend to start a business building tractors; this proves reasonably successful for Ferruccio, but he's a risk taker and wants to be a big shot like Enzo Ferrari so makes the brave move of designing a car and ultimately muscling in on his rivals patch. Things are a tad dull in the first half, but I could see potential for an interesting story developing; the partnership between Ferruccio and Matteo, the conflict coming from Ferruccio's father and wife, but it really starts to fall apart in the second half....

As soon as we're getting comfortable with some of the supporting characters.... the film jumps forward at least 10 years to find Ferruccio in a completely different place and worse than that some of the characters from the first half of the film get completely dropped without explanation; what happened to Ferruccio's father? The old sage who had a wise head on his shoulders??? Matteo is peeved with Ferruccio for stealing his girl and says he wants 25% of Ferruccio's business, but then when the film jumps forward to 1963 he is never heard from again so what happened in the intervening years? This is the absolute laziest writing one can encounter. The film says at the end that the film has no affiliation with anyone involved in the film bla de bla and it really shows (strangely enough it seems to use this as a badge of honour!!!).

The thing that really stuck out for me was the fact that this was a film set in Italy based on Italian protagonists yet not one person speaks in Italian; throughout the whole film I genuinely don't think I heard one word of Italian. At one point everyone is celebrating new year and they're all singing Auld Lang Syne (in English). Having said that it's clearly an American film with an American audience in mind so I suppose this should not come as much of a surprise.

Looking at the acting, then it's no surprise that the American actors have the meatiest roles and are the biggest draws (Grillo and Byrne are both fine as actors and do well with what they have to work with) but as for being convincing as respective Italian car manufacturing rivals....give over!!!)

It's a shame really as the filmmakers did make some effort by seeking out some actors and actresses whom were born and bred Italians, but they decided to give them smaller roles and despatched a lot of them early showing a lack of bravery. I can imagine the conversations "But nobody would know such and such." "These unknowns won't appeal to our audiences." What a shame!! Still at least some of these lesser known Italian actors were given a reasonable chance to showcase what they can do and I really hope that I see, at least some of them on the big screen (in far juicier roles in the future).

To end with I think the thing that really grinds my gears (did you see what I did there :-( was that the film itself was something of a downer. I knew nothing about Lamborghini or Ferrari (the people rather than the cars) and to put it bluntly and very mildly they are a pair of very objectionable fellas which doesn't exactly make the film a particular pleasant viewing experience. Lamborghini gets a big thumbs down from me I'm afraid.

If you're hoping for a film here to compete with Ford vs Ferrari, you will be sadly disappointed.

Although I had no prior knowledge of the man behind the legend, it almost seems to just be the story of a poor soldier mechanic coming home from the war and wants to make smaller and cheaper tractors, and risks the family farm to succeed. Then has clutch problems when he becomes rich, confronts Enzo Ferrari about improving them, gets told to get lost and so decides to become the competition. However there's no outcome of the success of the cars vs Ferrari. It focuses more on him losing his first wife, not being a great father, and changing from a common working man to a rich snob with little to no heart.

If that's the kinda story you're looking for, then this movie might be for you, but what most of us wanted to seexwas the history of Lamborghini till the end of his life. Not inserts of his imagination struggling to drag race Enzo Ferrari and then driving off lonely from his mansion before a messege states a historical fact and fades to black.

It sets up a few characters along the way that I'd liked to have known what happened to them? Such as Matteo, and probably the most disappointing is not showing how such models of the Countach came to be, from the concept to the design and how it was not designed as anything more than for looks etc.

It really began like it was going to be getting to the flesh and bones of the story, but almost seemed like it just ran out of gas and so they quickly wrapped it up and just quickly skipped over pages in the last few chapters.

Hopefully one day this story will get a better telling, perhaps a series to tell it right? But for now, don't bother with this one. Go over Lamborghini's Wikipedia page instead and save yourself from this story that's not the way it should be told with one of those abrupt endings that make you say, "is that it??"

Really disappointing after seeing the trailer, the budget for this movie appears to be less than the cost of a single aventador.

Some scenes are actually laughable how poor they are. Such great source material to work from and in the end runs like a bad play with zero payoff.

Massive Lamborghini fan and they really have let down the brand with this 'film'. It's a background watch and would have made a lot more sense as a series to develop the story and build.

Hope someone else does this brand and story justice. No issue with the plot but one scene in particular where they are eating breakfast and it's dark outside ? A real mess.