The entire world has always known how dangerous sports car racing is. Over the decades the race cars that were used have slowly turned from suicide death traps into cars that have protective roll bars, better tires, fire protection, and parts that break apart to absorb the violent forces of a collision away from the driver. Unfortunately for many years before these common-sense improvements in race car safety, many drivers have died horribly and many accidents also included the deaths of spectators. One would think that given the extreme danger of this sport, especially during the decades of the 1940s-1970s governments would have stepped in and prevented the high speeds or regulated the safety of the cars. The race cars used in this movie were stupidly designed and have absolutely no head protection for the driver. It is hard to believe that anyone would ever drive cars like these at such high speeds.

The new movie “Ferrari” is mostly about car racing, but is more about the personal life of Enzo Ferrari, played by Adam Driver, who was the founder of the Ferrari car company. Enzo was married to Laura Ferrari, played by Penélope Cruz, and throughout most of their relationship Enzo had a mistress Lina Lardi played by Shailene Woodley and they had a son together. Most of this story had too much to do with the soap opera-like arguments between Enzo and Laura due to his cheating and the fact that their company was close to bankruptcy – relying on one big race to save the company.

Despite all of the flaws, the acting is outstanding, especially with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, who both deserve Oscar nominations for their acting – making the too-average script that much more disappointing. From the trailers I have seen and the buzz about this film, I was expecting a better movie.

I was not surprised by the low 73% Rotten Tomatoes and 6.7 IMDB ratings for this movie due to the concentration of too much on the soap opera story and not enough about car racing from the 1950s.