#TIFF19: Christian Bale, Matt Damon form 'brotherhood' in FORD V FERRARI

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FORD V FERRARI stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale, who play American race car drivers Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles respectively, lead an impressive cast in the James Mangold-directed drama set against the 1966 Le Mans 24 hour car race.

Also walking the TIFF red carpet on Monday night at Roy Thomson Hall were The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal (Lee Iacocca), Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe (Molly Miles), Divorce’s Tracy Letts (Henry Ford II), and Sweet Home Alabama’s Josh Lucas (Ford executive Lee Beebe).

Damon told reporters before the film had its international premiere he took the job “for the chance to work with Christian Bale.”

For his part, Bale liked his character’s well-rounded nature.

“He was a dad, and he was a husband, who is not a meglomaniac, who is living life at 230 miles an hour not knowing if he can stop at the end of it,” Bale told reporters.

“He’s someone who’s got grit. He was in D-Day. He was in a tank unit, he liberated (Bergen-) Belsun (concentration camp in Germany). He’s used to doing everything himself. Building from the ground up. He’s a purist, absolutely. It’s his saving grace and his Achilles heel and he’s somebody who’s past his prime. He thinks that he lost his moment. And it takes this friendship, this brotherhood he has with Shelby, to get someone who’s able to be strategic and just tell Ken Miles, ‘Can you just shut-up,’ on occasions so that he can give Ken the opportunity to be the best in the world, which is what he is.”

Bale said FORD V FERRARI finds behind the wheel of cars a long way from his first automobile.

“Oh God, it was an old bouncy Buick,” the English actor told reporters with a laugh.

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“Shared it with my dad – those bench seats, that was all we could get you know – but bloody hell, that was fun all the less.”

Now Bale said he drives a pickup truck but “those Cobras (in the movie), oh were they ever a lot of fun to drive around. We would go and rehearse. We didn’t really need to but those things slide so beautifully and predictably and you can just take them around corners, just burning rubber and it’s a beautiful thing.”

FORD V FERRARI is about an underdog team of American mavericks (Shelby and Miles) who get the Ford Motor Company behind them to go up against Italian auto racers in Le Mans.

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