POSITIVES:
1) The performances are great. Damon and Bale are clearly the leads and they make Carol and Ken feel really relatable and you definitely route for both of them to be successful, especially in the final act. The writing helps a lot here too by making these main characters so likeable and giving them an engaging story 2) The racing scenes are helmed really well. They're very cinematic but also still very realistic to how actual racing looks. I also thought the way in which the writing enables the audience to understand the technical aspects of the cars was really good 3) For being a two and a half hour film, I thought the film went along at a good pace. It kept me engaged throughout and I never felt bored, which is unusual because normally long films like this really test my patience
NEGATIVES:
1) As a Brit, I have to say that I really struggled with the British characters in this film. Not only do Ken and his family have such stereotypical British accents, but also the film frequently has them saying lines that are just so stereotypically British and it felt caricatured at times 2) While most of the characters feel very fleshed out and grounded, I felt that Josh Lucas' character Leo Beebe was painfully one dimensional. He's just such a stereotypical corporate bad guy, he may as well have been twirling a moustache the whole time he was on screen. I understand that he's supposed to be unlikeable, but it just took me out of the film whenever he was on screen 3) There were a couple of moments where I thought it was quite clear that CGI and/or fake backgrounds were being used. The visual effects during the driving sequences were really good but there were certain more lowkey moments, such as Carol getting off a plane at the Mustang launch, where it's quite obvious that most of the shot is fake.
1) The performances are great. Damon and Bale are clearly the leads and they make Carol and Ken feel really relatable and you definitely route for both of them to be successful, especially in the final act. The writing helps a lot here too by making these main characters so likeable and giving them an engaging story 2) The racing scenes are helmed really well. They're very cinematic but also still very realistic to how actual racing looks. I also thought the way in which the writing enables the audience to understand the technical aspects of the cars was really good 3) For being a two and a half hour film, I thought the film went along at a good pace. It kept me engaged throughout and I never felt bored, which is unusual because normally long films like this really test my patience
NEGATIVES:
1) As a Brit, I have to say that I really struggled with the British characters in this film. Not only do Ken and his family have such stereotypical British accents, but also the film frequently has them saying lines that are just so stereotypically British and it felt caricatured at times 2) While most of the characters feel very fleshed out and grounded, I felt that Josh Lucas' character Leo Beebe was painfully one dimensional. He's just such a stereotypical corporate bad guy, he may as well have been twirling a moustache the whole time he was on screen. I understand that he's supposed to be unlikeable, but it just took me out of the film whenever he was on screen 3) There were a couple of moments where I thought it was quite clear that CGI and/or fake backgrounds were being used. The visual effects during the driving sequences were really good but there were certain more lowkey moments, such as Carol getting off a plane at the Mustang launch, where it's quite obvious that most of the shot is fake.