Lamborghini: L'Homme Derrière la Légende

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.