Italian Tragedy: LAMBORGHINI (2022)

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In the 1980’s, every testosterone-charged teenage boy had a poster of the Lamborghini Countach on his wall. Futuristic, stylish, and sexy; it was the most outrageous vehicle in the world. While die-hard racing fans cheered for Ferrari, everyone knew Lamborghini was true automotive art.

So, when “Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend” was released in 2022, the expectations of a generation of gearheads were high. The epic movie would span decades, showing how a lowly tractor company became the builder of dream machines. The movie starred swarthy Frank Grillo as Ferruccio Lamborghini, Oscar winner Mira Sorvino as his wife Annita Borgatti, plus Gabriel Byrne as evil Enzo Ferrari. Despite the rags to riches biography and a solid cast, the movie never gets out of first gear.

Although only a 97 min. runtime, “Lamborghini” has three parts set in different eras. The movie opens in 1946 with young Ferruccio Lamborghini returning home from WWII, determined to use the skills acquired in the army to build better tractors for Italian farmers, like his father. The protagonist is determined and single-minded, but movie viewers must be baffled by the Italian’s burning passionate desire for…farm equipment. Director Robert Moresco takes a swing at stylish filmmaking by shooting the entire first era in black and white, then colourizing the film like they used to do with old movies. The result is terrible and quite unnerving.

The movie really drags on, as halfway through, we still haven’t even seen Lamborghini’s first tractor, let alone his beautiful sports cars. When the time jump to 1963 finally occurs to start part two, Ferruccio is shown as an immensely wealthy man, living in a mansion right out of “Godfather Part III“. No explanation is given about how he went from an upstart to a captain of industry. Even worse, Ferruccio is portrayed as a philandering Italian playboy. Despite his loving wife Annita raising the son of Ferruccio and his first wife, who died in childbirth, Ferruccio is unfaithful to her. It just makes it impossible to like the character of Ferruccio.

The crux of the movie is the meeting between Ferruccio Lamborghini and Enzo Ferrari. The tractor titan is frustrated with his Italian sports cars. Without an appointment or introduction, arrogant Lamborghini approaches Ferrari when the old man is leaving his Maranello factory. Ferruccio initially boasts to Enzo that he owns a Ferrari for every day of the week, then insults Enzo by saying the car’s clutches are garbage, and proposes a Ferrari-Lamborghini partnership as the solution. Ferrari’s dismissive reply was “Let me make cars. You stick to making tractors, farmer.”

Remember, Ferrari was already a world-renown car company that won F1 World Championships in 1952, 1953, 1956, 1958 and 1961 before Ferruccio had even built a prototype of his 350 GT. Who the hell was this Lamborghini to think he was Ferrari’s equal?

The remainder of the film shows Ferruccio determined to beat old man Enzo at his own game. To build better, faster, more stylish Italian supercars, putting Ferrari to shame. But all this was out of spite, not passion. And for a movie about an outrageous sports car company, surprisingly little time is spent showing off the cars. Plenty of film runtime is spent on the first tractor, and most of the second act is spent on the 350 GT, Lamborghini’s first car. But the Earth-shattering Lamborghini Miura, the car that truly put Lamborghini on the map, is barely mentioned. Mostly it appears as a drawing on a cocktail napkin.

And what about that Lamborghini Countach, the epitome of 1980’s automotive excess? The car that put Lamborghini above Ferrari in the minds of gearheads? Well, a blue Countach does appear in Ferruccio’s dream sequences where he races against Enzo at the wheel of a red Ferrari…and loses.

The legend of Lamborghini deserved better than this.

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