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 The movie, shown at the Toronto Film Festival on Monday,
chronicles Ford Motor Co's bid to build a race car to beat
Ferrari at Le Mans, a race it dominated for years.
Furious at being rebuffed in his attempts to buy Ferrari - and
its racecar design - from creator Enzo Ferrari, Henry Ford II
decides to build his own car and hires American engineer Carroll
Shelby (Damon).
The team signs British racer Ken Miles (Bale) to drive the Ford
GT40, and in just 90 days the two companies are facing off in Le
Mans, the oldest and most challenging endurance auto race.
"The brakes were the weakest part of the car back then," Damon
told Reuters Television on the red carpet.
"So what these guys were doing is nuts, going 230 miles an hour
and not knowing whether or not you could stop the car. It's a
kind of a special breed of person to do that," he added.
Bale said his enthusiasm behind the wheel "completely outweighed
my skill."
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"(I) got to go and be on the track with some of the best racers in
the world," he said. "But (I) would never dare to assume that I
could compete with these absolute gods of racing that we had on
set."
The movie goes beyond the drive for speed to look at the conflicting
personalities of Miles and Shelby, as well as the clashes brought on
by corporate interference in the project.
"In many ways I think we tried to make a movie that speaks to people
who might not even be into racing," said director James Mangold.
"Ford v Ferrari" will be released in U.S. movie theaters on Nov. 15.
(Reporting by Robert Mezan; Writing by Moira Warburton; editing by
Darren Schuettler)
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