I am 135% certain Christian Bale, Matt Damon, and James Mangold were sitting around lamenting that the Fast & Furious dipshits got to have all the fun with a TWELFTH film in the works and thought, “Hell, why don’t WE make one?!” FvF is F&F for a smarter audience, and it’s a whole lot of fun too! Look, it’s a pretty simple story, Henry Ford II hires racecar designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles to design a car and beat Enzo Ferrari in the grueling Le Mans race. At two hours and thirty-two minutes, the film is too long. (I encourage you to play a drinking game and take a shot every time Mangold feels the need to have another insert of Bale’s foot pressing down further on the gas pedal.) But, it doesn’t really drag. (Ha. See what I did there.) Bale is getting a lot of press for his performance of Ken Miles, but a hot-headed purist about his craft that loses his temper at affronts to the virtue of his passion while otherwise being fairly polite and caring? That’s not acting, guys, that IS Christian Bale. No criticism, just an observation. It’s Damon who turns in a stellar performance as Carroll Shelby, calm, nuanced, and haunted, a lesser actor could have overblown Shelby and tanked the film. The bromance between Shelby and Mills is palpable and keeps the audience engaged in a film that could easily lose them in too much gearhead talk; Mangold artfully keeps everything on track. Noticeably strange was the choice to only subtitle certain Italian conversations. Obviously, when Shelby doesn’t know what they’re saying and that’s the point, the viewer shouldn’t either, but there’s no reason to include actual convos between the Italians otherwise. Make sure to pay particular attention to the sound as it plays a real character in the film and the viewer will feel the rumble of the track, certainly a contender for Oscar. See it for Bale and Damon’s chemistry and a fun romp around the track.