User reviews

If you love cars and movies that embody that, you may find this one sorely lacking in that department...As a fan of almost anything Frank Grillo appears in, I was all for seeing him in this role, however, he seems miscast and I felt at times I was still seeing characters from some of his other roles, leak thru...In other words, he did seem thoroughly embedded in his role and thus did not, at least for me, come across convincingly......then the is the car action or should I say, the utter lack of it.. Aside from the opening scene of the Lambo vs Ferrari, which is played over and over again during the movie, there is almost no other car driving or action scenes worth mentioning in this movie...Compared to Ford vs Ferrari, its not even remotely in the same league as far as acting or Content and thats being kind...This movie focuses on the life and loves and melodrama of the man's choices and the consequences of them... in that sense, if Thats what you want to see, its worth a watch but if you are expecting the cars to play an equal portion of the screen time, you will be sorely disappointed... It does give a glimpse, into the mans life and its a sad tale, a man who had so much, yet had noone really in his life to share it with... However accurate that is , who really knows?

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??"

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...

Instead of a comprehensive biopic, this film instead takes a look only into certain key chapters in the life of Ferruccio Lamborghini. For the average viewer this may be enough but for the car enthusiast it will leave them wanting more. Coming into this knowing very little about the man I feel I walked away with a better understanding of Lamborghini but only on a cursory level.

With an obviously limited budget they managed to stretch every penny to get a final product that is as polished as the cars. The acting was solid, the settings exact, the direction professional and the cars were beautiful. Sure they did not race the obviously very real and loaned classic vehicles into any danger but it did not detract much from the film which is more art than engineering.

There are a lot of garbage films out there but this is not one of them.

The story of Lamborghini is the the stuff of legend. Marque.

A sound script albeit more fantasy than truth.

Good acting from Grillo et al.

But this is no different from your average auto epic, like every film before it, it is let down by details.

The producers were either lazy or ignorant.

Why is Mr Lamborghini driving a US spec Countach at the start ?

Mr Ferrari in a lowly Mondial ?

Why on earth are there so many shots of an old Ferrari motor when real Lambo motors are not rare.

And why were real car sounds not used ?

Instead we have some generic motor revving dubbing in.

This could have been a great motor bio pic instead we get something extremely average.

Casual viewers may be fooled but those who know cars will groan with disappointment.

I have a better Italian accent than Frank Grillo.

OK this is not a great movie, but it is an essential one. I've always been a car nut, and in my youth had a serious flirtation with the Italian breed, a Lambo was sort of a distant dream. However this movie, whether fact or fiction, fills in the blanks very nicely, despite its glaring limitations.

In all its fairly well cast with the exception of Mira Sorvino, she has joined the list of Tired Worn & Used up with Halle Berry. Anyway she doesn't occupy enough screen time to cause any ruination, the movie itself takes care of that. Grillo does succeed in bringing the necessary intensity, drive, and vision of the Signore to the role, but the script drags and its uneven and missing key elements. The strained relationship between Ferrucio and his son was painful and somewhere along the line a sale of the company is orchestrated but we're left wondering why? A passable 90 minutes and to my dying day I will always believe if you put me behind the wheel of a Countach I could smoke Enzo Ferrari no matter what he's driving. 6.5/10.

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.

I went into this thinking it was a documentary but I was pleasantly surprised to find it an entertaining (although sometimes a little melodramatic) retelling of the life of a visionary. Some iffy acting (and accents) from some of the cast but the scenery and vehicles made up for it. There was also plenty of car p*rn for Lamborghini fans although I'd have liked to have seen more from the 80s, especially the story behind the Countach but I guess that has been told many times. I also heard he used salvaged parts from WWII vehicles abandoned by the US military but that's either untrue or left out of this film.

The real story of Lamborghini is the stuff of legends, and sadly, this film is NONE of that.

Terrible script, poor acting, tradjically bad set-pieces, laughable 'racing' and almost zero adherance to history.

I get that to make the film work, some stuff has to be massaged for the story, but this is just laughbly poor, I can only imagine the script writter was an intern given only a week to come up with somthing?

Compare this with Ford vs. Ferrari where they had the story not only close to acurate, but the charicters cast well, their intations realistic, the film-sets looked the part, the cars were the part, etc etc. - and that film grossed $225m

Lamborghini should sue for deformation.

I confess that before I watched this film i knew nothing about the founder and owner of Lamborghini. It's titled 'The Man behind The legend'. Hence i don't understand the negative reviews. I enjoyed watching this movie as it not only educated me on his life but also touched upon how the ideas for early cars were generated (for example the Miura's 'eye lashes' and the Lamborghini Bull logo. I was interested to hear how he started with a farmer's family history and how he was perceived by Enzo Ferrari. I honestly didn't know he actually owned some Ferrari's! Anyway, this was a pleasure to watch :-)

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.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a big fan of Lamborghinis so let's say that from this film I would have expected a lot, and indeed I got a nice film that tells the story of Ferruccio Lamborghini but with mostly technical problems that should not be underestimated. Meanwhile, let's say that, as a narrative, even it fits but maybe it is too fast towards the end, what is really wrong is the dubbing. I have seen this movie 2 times, one in the original language and the other in Italian, in the original language nothing to say but as soon as the dubbing comes in it is terrible, voices lower than others, moments when the main characters don't move their mouths and speak, half-eaten words... In short, terrible. Otherwise, it is a simple film that limits itself to its objective, which is to briefly tell the story of Ferruccio's rise in the world of motors unfortunately leaving small details unanswered that we will not get. I recommend this film to motor lovers and especially to the Lamborghini realm.

Finally a Italian movie with Italian actors and you bums don't like it??? When Luca or Mario came out with that garbage cast you losers loved it, why support non Italians playing Italians ??? I loved seeing mostly Italians in this bio pic.

The back story was super interesting and I loved the story of how Lamborghini was created.

I'm Italian, everyone is saying there should be more accents, but these white ppl would cry that they can't understand. Make up your mind.

My issue is that Enzo should of been played by a Italian, Gabriel Byrne??? He's Irish !!!!!

That alone drops the score for me.

This is not a real review, it should be understood more as a collection of impressions on the film.

A film that is a bit too underrated but deserves at least a passing grade because it manages to tell the story of one of the most influential men in the panorama of Italian luxury cars very well. The film is therefore a beautiful story, raw and full of both the good and bad things that Lamborghini did in his life, from the first tractors to the first luxury car arriving at the end of the company. In conclusion, it is worth seeing the film but do not expect something exceptional, it is a good story told quite well but obviously it is not a masterpiece.

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.

Whoa, slow down there.

Somehow the filmmakers managed to make the old race cars look like they are going about 25 MPH. The faster more modern versions look to be traveling at speeds of around 45MPH! Wow!

The characters who make these amazing machines are bumbling idiots who can barely drive.

This all sounds a little crazy...can it be true? Well, some other stuff happens too...then back to some high-speed 45MPH drag racing.

In the end we come full circle, to realize that the Lamborghini is a status symbol, that breaks down all the time and is incredibly expensive to fix...kind of like this movie.

As with any of the famous and successful entrepreneurs, success comes with drive and sacrifice. No different with Lamborghini. He made many personal sacrifices. Intense movie with good history. Great memorable hrase "Buy a Ferrari if you want to be someone, buy a Lamborghini if you are someone". Obviously. Porsche was not making road vehicles yet. If you like automobile history, worth watching, you will like it otherwise, not for you. Competition vs Ferrari was interesting and clever. The acting was decent, the scenery good. Good movie for men and women, regardless of there love of any type of cars.

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.

The Story of Lamborghini as a Brand (does not matter tractors or sports cars), it's story, owner and his family life, fighting with Ferrari - require more timing and better directing, not mention writing. Particularly this movie is lack everything of above. It's looks like either studio cut 1-1,5 hours of materials because editing is so lazy and weak OR director + scrip writer just a did not take this project serious enough. Some sub-stories in movie appears and what looks like a challenges for characters are being just resolved in matter of few minutes of screen time. Frank Grillo is great in this movie as well as cast - no questions to them.