KYLE SMITH: Ferrari Review: Adam Driver in a Drama of Speed and Steel.

[Michael] Mann has been developing this project for more than 20 years. His screenwriter, Troy Kennedy Martin, died in 2009. Mr. Mann’s first choice to play the lead, Christian Bale, eventually backed off and made another movie about the same milieu, 2019’s “Ford v. Ferrari.”

Now Adam Driver is the one with his foot on the gas, and it’s a relief to note that Mr. Driver, who gave a cartoonish performance as another Italian icon in the awful “House of Gucci,” this time is elegantly restrained, without overdoing the accent, as the man who in 1939 founded the eponymous car company. He tells us all we need to know about his obsession when he says, “Jaguar races to sell cars. I sell cars in order to race.” Enzo isn’t an especially likable man: He has adopted a strategy of steadfast stoicism in the face of adversity, which looks like coldness when one of his racers gets killed, seemingly because of a manufacturing flaw in one of Ferrari’s cars. He cheats on his wife, who sometimes responds with gunfire. But with all of his personal failings, Mr. Driver’s Ferrari becomes a monument to all of the fanatically obsessed men who, determined to produce something great, correctly bet that their creations would outlive the memories of their sins.

Mr. Mann’s slow-burning, intensely focused drama is occasionally ponderous, especially in its sleepy midsection, but its third act is absolutely thrilling.

It’s not a great film, and no one will mistake Mann’s Ferrari with Thief, Manhunter, or Heat. But as a biopic with some brilliant racing scenes, it’s well worth a watch on the big screen during the holiday season, if only to see Driver performing a grownup character, rather than Kylo Ren in yet another execrable Disney Star Wars sequel.