Film: Le Mans '66

I have no regard for motor racing and yet this film gripped me to my would-be racing car seats all the way to last lap. 

It’s based on the extraordinary true story (which, as is often the case, I had never heard of) of Ford vs Ferrari, which is the alternative title according to posters we saw in New Zealand last month.

The former racing driver turned car designed Carrol Shelby (Matt Damon) is asked by Ford to build them a racing car to end the dominance of Enzo Ferrari and race it in Le Mans in 1966. They generously gave his team a matter of weeks to do this. Shelby enlists temperamental Brit Ken Miles (Christian Bale) who is depicted up to his petrol gauge in debt running his own mechanics business.

They have to work against Ford’s directives in order to make this impossible task happen.

I couldn’t quite place the Miles family accent as it swerved somewhere between Lancashire and Yorkshire although now find it in fact he was born in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham - the car manufacturing heart of the UK - so it’s disappointing for this to fail to get a mention. The relationship he had with his only son, however, was a beautiful backdrop to his astonishing story. #LeMans66

7½/10