In 1966, the Ford Motor Company took on the very best in the business, Enzo Ferrari, at the world-renown Le Mans. The race? A 24-hour deathmatch that raged from dawn through dusk, past midday and midnight, through rain or shine, to its brutal conclusion. A showdown for the best and the ballsiest, Le Mans was won by the best cars driven by the ballsiest drivers. Over at Ford, men in slick suits seek corporate glory and a much-needed rejuvenation in sales. They attempt to reinvent the dad bod of cars that was Ford’s current models, opting for something sleek, sexy, durable. And, most of all, fast. In essence, a Ferrari. But a little elbow grease and a bunch of smoke-filled boardroom meetings do not a champion make. A champion requires an intangible; the perfect union of fallible machinery and the grit of man.

Though the title of James Mangold’s film Ford v Ferrari suggests some kind of clash of the car-making industry titans, the blue-collar, oil-slicked American assembly line workers bootstrapping to conquer the dastardly mustache-twirling Italian vehicular artisans, the film is much different from its American v. European car movie pickup line. And much more subversive.

Mangold has long expressed interest in the American Western, exploring themes of men resisting change, cultural barriers, weary warriors, and a lingering desolation of place or soul. After delivering a hugely satisfying straight-up-Western with his remake of 3:10 to Yuma, Mangold continued to inject these themes into his filmography, most notably in Logan which not only thematically resonated as a Western but also looked like one, from the dusty cowboy garb to the sandblasted locales. In Ford v Ferrari, the frontier is man-made. American bureaucracy is an invading force of sameness, coming to tame two men on the fringes: car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale). For Ken, the perfect lap is manifest destiny. For Shelby, car manufacturing becomes a revolution. Together they band together to defeat the homogenization of their beloved art form: racing. Doing so under the thumb of Henry Ford Jr. (Tracy Letts) proves to be no small feat, the red tape posing as much of an issue as the actual engineering of a champion race car from the bolts up.

Ken is a cowboy through and through but not the American brand of Marlboro-smokin’, blue-jeans-wearin’, clock-punchin’ variety that slaps up easily on a billboard. He speaks his mind, often singling out the most powerful man in the room and barking insults up at them, happy to make a humble living fixing up cars at his body shop when he’s not claiming gold trophies at the local circuits. Not one to hold a grudge, he’ll host a slap-off with an ally and soon after share a cold pop while they lick their wounds. Shelby is neither his yin nor his yang – the two fit more comfortably into a brotherly camaraderie/competitive grove – but when they partner up with the impossible task of besting Ferrari at literally what they do best, they make like the IMF and make the impossible possible.

Skinny and shriveled but full of good-spirited piss and vinegar, Bale offers up the kind of inevitably great performance the seasoned actor has left us to expect from him time and time again. Bale is simply excellent as Miles, yet another notch in his belt of best-of-year performances. Damon, on the other hand, doesn’t have as sturdy a legacy to lean on but matches the pace set by Bale, giving a supercharged take on the strong-willed and hard-nosed Shelby. The pair receive support from Jon Bernthal as Ford marketing guru Lee Iacocca, Caitriona Balfe playing Ken’s fiery wife, Noah Jupe as Ken’s wide-eyed son, Ray McKinnon as the reliable crewman Phil Remington and Josh Lucas as slimy executive Lee Beebe, each bringing something tangible to take table to elevate the ensemble.

Like a racecar with airflow problems, Ford v Ferrari takes off and soars by perfectly folding the humanist character study of these two men into rip-roaring, adrenaline-fueled set pieces. Mangold captures the soul of what makes racing such a powerful draw to those who feel its pull, justifying why it is such a risky and terrifying endeavor for those of us out there (myself included) who fail to understand the intensity of cars that max out around 220 mph. Crisp cinematography from Phedon Papamichael helps clarify Mangold’s work, resulting in some of the cleanest depictions of race car driving ever put to film. His work is at once tremendously white-knuckle and unfussy, elevating the raceway thrills by attaching them to the hip of the emotional stakes of the characters.

From a technical standpoint, this movie roars. The beefy, tire-squealing sound design will make you want to experience Ford v Ferrari like a Pavement concert: as close up and as loud as possible. Editing from Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker and Dirk Westervelt makes its over two-and-a-half-hour runtime zoom by as if on cruise control, making emotional pitstops for audiences to cheer, get angry, or even shed a tear. And the crusty, dust-kickin’, rust belt, Americano score from Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders help amplify the “fuck the man” undertones positively raging from Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller’s script. Westerns have always focused on men trying to escape the inevitable. In Ford v Ferrari, they’re able to do so in race cars.

CONCLUSION: A rip-roaring and irreverent crowdpleaser glued to two excellent performances from Matt Damon and Christian Bale, ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ fires all on cylinders to prove that great blockbusting entertainment is even better when it’s not hogtied by existing IP.