Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend’ on VOD, an Automotive Biopic Starring Grillo as Lambo

This week in Why Bother With the Damn Accents Theater is Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend (now available to rent or own on VOD services like Amazon Prime), more affectionately known as GRILLO PLAYS LAMBO, since the famous Italian carmaker’s (probably famous Italian) shoes are filled by none other than ever-lovin’ action guy Frank Grillo. He replaced Antonio Banderas in the lead role, and Gabriel Byrne shows up for a few scenes as Enzo Ferrari, replacing Alec Baldwin. Part of the story is the kinda-rivalry between the rich car guys, and part of the story is how Lambo drove away all his loved ones, not in fast, sexy sports cars, but on the winds of his assholishness, which was fueled not by gasoline but his intense desire to create the most bee-yoo-tiful cars ever seen by man, god or beast. Now let’s see if this biopic sticks.

LAMBORGHINI: THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: GRAPES. Are they sour? Who knows! But they’re on a farm owned by Ferruccio Lamborghini (Grillo), who appears to be a lonely old man in a gigantic house. Now it’s nighttime, and he revs a succulent baby-blue Lamborghini Countach alongside Enzo Ferrari (Byrne) in one of his Ferrari whatevers. It’s red, like they always are, which makes the blue Lambo that much more delicioso. Screech, they take off, and then – CUT TO: the 1940s. World War II is over and young Ferruccio (Romano Reggiani) and fellow soldier buddy Matteo (Matteo Leoni) hop off the bus in their fatigues. Ferruccio immediately proposes to Clelia (Hannah van der Westhuysen) then heads home to his father (Fortunato Cerlino) the farmer. They’re picking cabbages when Ferruccio, a mechanic in the army, declares his desire to design tractors and build race cars. “You’re a farmer,” his father replies. “You throw your life away.”

See, Ferruccio wants to be all-caps GREAT. Not just some guy farting around in the dirt with cabbages. So he and Matteo build a race car hoping to raise money and they lose, and then Ferruccio’s dad mortgages the farm so he can start a business, and then Ferruccio argues with Clelia, and then she’s pregnant, and then we get through several “and then”s before half the movie’s over and Grillo’s only been in the midnight-drag-race scenes we keep cutting back to. Will he ever pass Enzo in his f—ing Ferrari?

Anyway, young Ferruccio deals with a terrible tragedy and there’s sadness all around, sadness for everyone. Finally, it’s 1963, and at last there’s Grillo, so I’m going to call his character Lambo now. He’s married to Annita (oh hi, Mira Sorvino!), and his son is a teenager, and he’s made a fortune building efficient, affordable tractors and heating and cooling stuff. Units? Yeah, probably. Units. And everyone has terrible Italian accents, terrible Italian accents for everyone! They come, they go, they sometimes sound like Bronx accents, and Byrne, he doesn’t even seem to be really trying. He’s barely there at all, to be honest! We keep seeing him in his red car, outrunning Lambo’s blue car, and then Enzo meets Lambo, and he insults our protagonist, which really burns his ass. Burns it! And now Lambo will build the most bee-yoo-tiful car ever, and rub it in Ferrari’s face, even if it costs our guy his friends, his family, everything. You might say Lambo is (pause for dramatic effect) driven.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ford vs. Ferrari more than filled the need for movies with dialogue about four-barrel carb thingamajigs and flywheel pinvalves, for a few years at least. Otherwise, deposit Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend alongside Tucker: The Man and His Dream in the generically-titled-biopics-of-carmakers file.

Performance Worth Watching: I like Grillo. He’s fine as Lambo, even though he’s hamstrung by this screenplay. Go watch his rock-solid Netflix B-movies Point Blank and Wheelman to see him at his badass best.

Memorable Dialogue: Ferrari fuels Lambo’s fire: “Go back to your tractors, farmer.”

Sex and Skin: None, although some of y’all no doubt will be turned on by close-ups of a lovely yellow Miura.

Our Take: Lambo’s desire fuels the rivalry and the rivalry fuels the desire, so round and round it goes, like, I dunno, a round thing on a car, maybe the round thing that touches the road and there are four of the round things, and if you happen to be among his loved ones, you’ll get run over, and the round things will leave marks on you. Too bad Lamborghini never picks up much dramatic speed and remains stuck in neut- OK, enough of the hacky metaphors. No derisive comments about how the movie grinds its gears or blows a tire or snaps the key off in the ignition rendering it immobile. I’m done with that shit.

But what we have here is the answer you don’t want in reply to this question: Is the movie more interesting than the Wikipedia entry about the subject? The screenplay gracelessly hodgepodges from one moment to the next – Lambo meets Ferrari, Lambo wants more more more from his engineers, Lambo fights with his wife, Lambo is a crappy absentee father – as Lambo’s inner conflict simmers and his rivalry with Ferrari fizzles and the cast is saddled with boilerplate declarative dialogue like “Either you’re a carmaker or a dreamer, Ferruccio,” or “It’s perfection I’m after.” The seams of a shoestring production are everywhere, in the choppy, thrill-deprived racing sequences, Byrne’s noncommittal performance, and the final act, which reaches a hasty conclusion and feels as if several scenes are outright missing. This movie shouldn’t have been taken out of the garage. (Damn it.)

Our Call: GRILLO AS LAMBO is a disappointment. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.