What happens when you stick an actor in a real F1 car and then strap all kinds of camera rigs to that car while also filming the action from drones? You get the equivalent of what looks like video game footage, but is actually real-life. You also get F1: The Movie. Yes, the Brad Pitt-led, Joseph Kosinski-directed tale of an old driver coming from nowhere to save an F1 team is pretty, but pretty can only get you so far, you need emotion, drama, and other ingredients to make a successful and entertaining movie. Luckily for all of us, F1: The Movie does all of that and then some.
F1 stars Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Sarah Niles, Joseph Balderrama, Will Merrick, Kim Bodnia, Abdul Salis, and Callie Cooke. Joseph Kosinski returns after directing Top Gun: Maverick to direct and co-wrote the screenplay with Ehren Kruger. For the uninitiated, F1: The Movie is about Sonny Hayes (Pitt) a former F1 driver who now resides on whatever race circuit will take him. His old friend Ruben (Bardem) now owns an F1 team, the APX GP, but he’s under the gun with the board of directors and needs to win a race to keep control of the team. His other driver, Joshua Pearce, is a great driver, but he’s a rookie and needs to be taught the ropes, along the way, rogue members of the board threaten Ruben’s control of the team, and other factors like Pearce and Sonny butting heads threaten the entire season.
Without further ado, let’s get to the good, the bad, and the beautiful of F1: The Movie.
The Good Of F1: The Movie
Look, the story might be about as stock as they come, but that’s why it works. The old gun hired to help train a young gun is straight out of westerns, and Brad Pitt and Damson Idris perform their roles perfectly. Pitt in particular, and the script for the film, knows he’s playing a cowboy out there. You can sit there and think “I’m not going to get emotionally invested in this” and repeat that to yourself while watching F1: The Movie, and it’ll still hook you. It’s all about the little things, the movie kicks off perfectly, showing off Sonny Hayes driving in a Daytona 24/7 race. He lives in a van, he’s floating through life, all he knows how to do is race. That’s all we need to know, to root for this guy.
The opposite goes for Damson Idris’s Pearce. He’s cocky, he’s brash, he has a lot to learn, and yet, we also want to root for him. They give little breadcrumbs that this guy isn’t just a cocky youngster on the F1 circuit. He treats his mom well, he has a temper, but he can recognize when he’s wrong. It makes the transformation he undergoes that much more satisfying as an audience member.
The racing. The goddamn racing. Everything about F1: The Movie is beautiful. The actors are shot like movie stars, the cars are shot like the stars of the movie. Joseph Kosinski has put cameras in places I didn’t think was possible and has shots of F1 cars that should make the television producers of the on-track product, blush.
The Bad Of F1: The Movie
There are a couple of things in F1: The Movie that stood out to me. The first one is the similarities between this and Top Gun: Maverick. It’s lazy to complain about someone copying their own homework on one of the best movies in recent memory, but still. This plays out A LOT like that movie does, even down to there not really being an antagonist in the film, besides a rogue member of the Board of Directors. We don’t see Sonny or Pearce interact with any of the other drivers on the circuit, they’re all played as just antagonistic cars on the track, but it would have been nice to see Sonny getting yelled at by Lewis Hamilton or someone else.
There’s also some plotlines and character details that feel like they’re going to be paid off, that get more muted payoffs, or just don’t at all. Joshua has a social media manager, Cash (played by Samson Kayo), who feels like he might be an antagonistic character, but then just kind of sinks into the background.
The only other issue I ran into with F1: The Movie is that it feels like it gets to a point with the “point of no return, all is lost” moment in the end of the second act, only to kind of just add another second act of the film. It feels kind of jarring, and then we get another moment for the audience to gasp, only for the third act to start and THEN we get a lot of the payoffs. It’s small, but for some audience members, it could turn them off.
The Beautiful Of F1: The Movie
F1: The Movie feels like a spectacle, a blockbuster, a real movie. In an age where we have questionable lighting, where movie stars are not shot like movie stars, this movie throws it back and just gives you an all-in thrill ride. This is going to get described as a “dad movie”. I think it’s much more than that, but still, when this movie shows up on TNT on a Tuesday night at 6:30PM, you know I’ll be sitting down to watch it. It’s destined to be a classic racing movie like Days of Thunder. From the music, to the story, it all combines together to make for an excellent movie.
Pitt has electric chemistry with everyone in the movie; you can feel the heat between him and Damson Idris. Kerry Condon is entrancing, and his bro relationship with Ruben is a highlight. Just the way he interacts with all the crew members is a treat. Through the entire 2 hour and 35 minute runtime, there isn’t a moment of F1: the Movie that doesn’t make for a thrilling time.
I know plenty of dads, they’re all gonna love F1: The Movie. The camera work is breathtaking, Brad Pitt is channeling his best maverick spirit here. In a world that tears you down and tells you you’re done, F1 is a breath of fresh air. A fantastic theatrical experience.
F1: The Movie releases in theaters on June 27th.
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