Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend

Unfortunately it all felt a bit rushed.

They really had an opportunity to drop the viewers back to the 60's and the birth of the Lamborghini super car after he was snubbed by Ferrari.

Frank Grillo did his best and was a good Ferruccio but I feel like the script did not let him fully embrace the role and fell very flat.

Too much was left on the table that really needed fleshing out, it was optimistic to think squeezing a story of this magnitude into 90 minutes was going to work:

There was little to get excited about watching Gabriel Byrne try or embody the role of Enzo Ferrari.

I hope the Ferrari movie slated for 2023 does this era of movie some justice as this missed the mark for me...

Not as bad as some make out to be. Certainly no masterpiece, but it is interesting. Really bad accents at times, but if that kind of detail doesn't distract you then any liberties with historical accuracy aren't likely to either.

The subject does whet ones appetite for a really good biopic, so perhaps someone will throw some money at it some day, cast more Italians, better sets.

For a low budget attempt at telling a story, it gets the job done, and it does have redeeming moments. If you're interested in the engineering, beyond the "you cannot fit 4 carbs i there!" or "pop-up headlights are too complicated", you'll be left wanting.

If you're happy enough to spend an hour and a half getting a very cursory look at the Lamborghini story, and can overlook some marginal acting, go for it.

After really wanting to see this movie, I must say that it could not have been worse. The actors playing Ferrari and Lamborghini don't resemble the real people in the slightest. In the 1948 road race scene, what are Mercedes 190 SL roadsters doing there, given they came out seven years later? Why is Ferrari drag racing against a Countach in a Mondial? Ferruccio didn't design the Miura, Marcello Gandini did. And I could on and on.

But the worst part is that the movie entirely misses the point: with the Miura, Lamborghini invented the mid-engined supercar and completely re-wrote the rules of the game. Ferrari's cars were made obsolete overnight.

The real story should have been how Feruccio with his engineers Bizzarini, Gandini, Dallara, Stanzani and Wallace pulled that off and made history.

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??"

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.