Italian director Stefano Mordini pulls off a dramatization of admirable taste from a decade-defining festival of automakers, but never manages to put the race center on it.
Go back, if you will, to 1983, the year of Return of the Jedi and the A-Team. It was also the year of a tug-of-war in the rarely dangerous and hotly contested world of rally racing. In the World Rally Championship, the German Audi Quattro A2 team, led by Hannu Mikkola, faced Walter Röhrl and the Italian Lancia 037; it’s a rivalry that this dramatization portrays as a war of David as opposed to that of Goliath, pitting technologically complex Germans against the more strategic, ball-breaking Italian outsiders.
Liberties have been taken, but probably not too many for other people outside the home, the rally stalwarts, to worry about. Some real-world issues don’t lend themselves particularly well to the dynamics of a thrilling fiction: the season that takes place. Over the course of a full calendar year, the division of the drivers’ and constructors’ championships, the slow accumulation of season problems. . . We’re not exactly in the penalty shootout draw, until the end, the penalty shootouts.
There’s an admirable sense of tastefulness to the approach here of Italian director Stefano Mordini, working from a script he wrote with Filippo Bologna and Riccardo Scamarcio. Michael Mann’s recent film Ferrari had the good sense to print the legend, giving thrill-seekers what they want in terms of interpersonal drama and explosive racing set-pieces. Mordini’s film, though, is a handsomely made, stylish-looking piece of cinema, with some beautifully lensed racing scenes and great 1980s wardrobes – but when you sit down to watch something called Race for Glory you do want your heart to beat faster. This can’t quite get away from the lurking sense that it could do with just a little bit more rev in its engine.
Race for Glory: Audi vs Lancia launches on February 5 on virtual platforms.