In wide release is the last major film of the year from Hollywood veteran Michael Mann – 'Ferrari', a film in which the director plays at Italian life and is not afraid to be sentimental.

The film tells about a short period in the life of the famous Italian designer Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), which took place in a short span of 1957. This year became difficult both for Ferrari himself and for his family and his beloved brainchild – the car manufacturing plant. The 60-year-old Enzo is torn between his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom he shares everything (including a young son) except duty, and his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz), with whom he shares nothing but duty (she is also his business partner).

At the same time, Ferrari's factory is on the verge of bankruptcy, and the only salvation is a merger with one of the major car companies, but Enzo does not want to completely lose control over car production and therefore decides to participate in the dangerous Mille Miglia race for promotional purposes. In a short time, Enzo needs to assemble a team and sort out his personal life.

The director of the legendary 'Heat', 'Collateral', and 'Ali' this time plays the Italian card, adapting a particularly passionate episode from the life of Enzo Ferrari, complete with obligatory wine during any important (and not so important) conversations and sun-drenched, grainy mountain landscapes between which the race track lies.

'Ferrari' sometimes unmistakably reveals Mann's signature style, and at other times completely disorients the viewer with the absence of characteristic features inherent to the author. For example, here he almost completely abandoned digital cameras and the television picture mode, only occasionally resorting to it in close-ups of faces, marking his presence so that no one doubts whose film they came to see. And the loud sounds of gunshots were replaced by the deafening roar of engines.

But what the director remains true to is the image of the main character. Before us is again a man obsessed with his work, in an impeccable suit, with gray hair, never taking off his dark glasses, giving crisp orders to subordinates, and creating the illusion of a personal life, which, strictly speaking, he could easily do without.

True, this time Mann does not hide the sensitive softness that has come with age, and decides to shift the focus, expanding the line of personal life and family problems of Ferrari, while relegating the work of his life, cars and races, to the background. Therefore, Enzo here is no longer the cold professional like Neil in 'Heat' or Vincent in 'Collateral'. He increasingly reflects, ponders his life, his long journey, sometimes even sheds a stingy tear when visiting the opera, where the women close to him watch him – one from the box, another on TV (a metaphorical but completely alien scene here). Still, the pragmatism of Mann's characters is also finite, the director seems to hint, and sometimes one needs to think about eternity.

Adam Driver's focused face, whose cheekbones seem sharp enough to sharpen knives, periodically softens when he visits his deceased heir or communicates with his son from another woman, but more often we see a passionate, burning-from-within engineer striving to follow the plan and not deviating from it for a minute. Even while talking with his son, Ferrari simultaneously develops a scheme to improve fuel injection into the engine. This image, typical of Mann, is very convincing. Like other characters in his films, Enzo is surrounded by love and death, but he mechanically pays attention to both only as much as needed, extracting only benefit.

Unlike 'Ford v Ferrari', this is not a film about cars or races, although they have enough screen time and one episode that sends chills down the spine. And not even about the notorious love triangle. This is a film about how a man, to the misfortune of his loved ones, found his true calling, and everything else for him is routine and unnecessary sentiment. They cloud the mind, but in the blueprints, only a steady hand is needed.