‘Ferrari’ Ending Explained: What Happens at the Finish Line of Michael Mann’s Latest Movie? (2025)

Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for 'Ferrari'

After eight years since his last film, Michael Mann has returned to the big screen, but it is like he never left. Mann's new film, Ferrari, about the famed automobile driver, designer, and entrepreneur, Enzo Ferrari, fits comfortably in the director's oeuvre. If Ferrari, the visionary behind the sports car brand, were not a real figure, he would have been an ideal Mann protagonist—one that is ardently concerned with metals and engines to the same degree that Neil McCauley from Heat is stringent about professionalism as a bank robber. While Ferrari is a return to form for the filmmaker, or perhaps a retread of his previously mediated ideas on isolation and exceptionalism, according to some critics, the film's ending distills Mann's obsessions about obsessed men in a harrowing and destructive fashion.

Ferrari

Biography

Drama

History

Set in the summer of 1957, with Enzo Ferrari's auto empire in crisis, the ex-racer turned entrepreneur pushes himself and his drivers to the edge as they launch into the Mille Miglia, a treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy.

Release Date

December 25, 2023

Director

Michael Mann

Cast

Shailene Woodley , Adam Driver , Sarah Gadon , Penelope Cruz

Runtime

130 minutes

Enzo Ferrari is the Ideal Michael Mann Protagonist

In a wise artistic decision, Mann forgoes telling a cradle-to-grave biopic about Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) and instead focuses on one fateful summer in 1957, when the car engineer prepared for a race at the Mille Miglia as his business faced bankruptcy and his personal life, mainly his relationship with his estranged wife, Laura Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) simultaneously crumbled. The fractured couple is in business together, but they are reeling from the death of their son, Dino. Laura is oblivious to Enzo's other romantic relationship with Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), who he is raising a second child with.

Michael Mann, one of the most visually potent and emotionally transcendent filmmakers of our time, is preferential to stories about determined men who maintain their expert craft by eliminating outside variables, which often involve settling down in their domestic life. This includes James Caan's jewel burglar in Thief, Robert De Niro's bank robber in Heat, and Al Pacino's 60 Minutes producer in The Insider. Mann's protagonists are inclined to an unsentimental approach to life, and through Mann's sharp writing and directing, they develop a philosophical aura to their profession, as seen in Tom Cruise's Assassin in Collateral. Enzo Ferrari mirrors the modus operandi of Mann's previous characters. He expects nothing else besides perfection, to the point that he demands his drivers risk their lives to realize the exceptionalism of his cars. Ferrari frequently insists that his drivers avoid using brakes in races.

'Ferrari' Ends With a Fatalistic Conclusion and Intense Domestic Standoff

The film's climax depicts the 1957 Mille Miglia, an open-road, motorsport race held in Italy, where Ferrari entered his racing team, featuring Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), Peter Collins (Jack O'Connell), and Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey). The race, captured through Mann's precious digital photography, is gritty but maintains a slickness that complements the digital aesthetic. In the heat of the race, de Portago's vehicle hits a stray small object in the middle of the lane, slashing the front tire and subsequently launching the car into a crowd of observers. The accident killed multiple people, including children. While Ferrari is deeply contrite over the tragedy, because of his relentless pursuit of excellence, audiences can't help but indirectly assign blame to the car mogul for this crash. Mann laboriously researched and recreated the fatal crash, with Mann stating in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, "I wanted to shoot it very factually, as if we were a newsreel camera who saw this coming and just followed it. No multiple cuts, which I thought would’ve been gratuitous." His research revealed that de Portago's tire was punctured.

The film's climax concludes with a turbulent resolution between Enzo and Laura regarding the future of the Ferrari corporation and his acknowledgment of his second child. Laura, who handles finances for the Ferrari corporation, cashes a check for half a million dollars that jeopardizes the viability of the company. Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz have been widely celebrated for their electric and humane performances, and their domestic spats prove to be the most compelling portions of the film, even more so than Mann's detailed obsessions with craft and purposeful isolationism. Cruz, in particular, subverts the restrictive characterization of the wife in biopics. She is not merely the woman who coldly stands in the way of the man's career prosperity, but rather, stands toe-to-toe with Ferrari as they ferociously grapple with their trauma.

For Michael Mann, black and white characters are non-existent. Character motivations and relationships never belong in rigid prisms in his films, and this is especially true in the final interaction between Enzo and Laura. Following the crash and the ensuing toxic public relations battle, in addition to the company's financial precariousness, Laura agrees to reinvest in Ferrari with the same check she cashed out under one stipulation: that her husband never acknowledges his son with Lina as a Ferrari offspring while she is alive. This moment signals themes surrounding humanity being substituted for monetary gains, but in the same breath, it is a touching gesture of affection. Cruz said in the interview with EW that she "realized what a love letter he [Mann] was writing to all the women in similar positions, and I felt very honored that he had chosen me to give this woman that voice." This is the beauty of Mann's filmography. Beneath the high-wire tension of films like Heat and Miami Vice exists genuine romanticism between masculine themes and characters.

'Ferrari's Touching Intersection Between Art, Commerce, and Family

Ferrari's closing moment depicts an intimate scene between Ferrari and his second son, Piero. They sit outside the cemetery where Dino's grave resides. Enzo connects with his child in the only way he can: by gifting him an autograph of Alfonso de Portago, which was signed just before he died in the crash. Keeping up with Mann's eye for romanticism, Enzo grabs Piero's hand and walks him up the stairs to Dino's grave, as the end credits immediately follow. This moment suggests a mawkish conclusion to the Ferrari story, but the context of Enzo's life-or-death business model, one that resulted in a tragic accident at the Mille Miglia, registers a somber note. The event is inseparable from the greater narrative of the film, which is why the film wraps up in the wake of the tragedy.

Perhaps the signature line of Ferrari comes from the titular character in a meeting with his drivers, which can be heard in the film's primary trailer. "Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space at the same moment in time," explains Ferrari. This literally refers to the science behind auto-racing, but it succinctly reflects the dramaturgy of the film and just about every Michael Mann film at that. Ferrari's determination to create the most exceptional motor racing car is incapable of intersecting with a stable life as a husband and father. In a stunning twist, Mann does not revel in these conflicting ways of life. The business transaction/gesture of love in Laura's reinvestment in the company proves that Ferrari's isolated craft was a detriment all along. His calculated approach to perfection was solemnly reconsidered following the deadly crash, and his most satisfactory way of salvation lies in taking Piero to Dino's grave.

It should be noted that Enzo Ferrari's theory surrounding objects occupying the same space is coming back to haunt him. Now that his corporation is beholden to Laura's financial backing, he must compartmentalize his work life and personal life under her condition. Piero cannot carry the honor of the Ferrari name as long as Laura is funding the company. The boy directly confronting the dead, a soul that belonged to his father in a past life, is ominous. When considering the punishing nature of Ferrari's fate, the walk-up to the grave plays far bleaker than what's written on the page. Throughout his career, at least in the events depicted in Mann's latest film, Ferrari operated as if he lived inside the engine of one of his sports cars.Ferrari's ending shows that the typical behavioral mindset of a Michael Mann protagonist is a suffocating prism.

Ferrari is now playing in theaters in the U.S.

Get tickets