directed by Joseph Kosinski
written by Ehren Kruger and Kosinski
Slight disclaimer: I had low expectations for F1: the Movie, for two main reasons, the first being that the lead character was played by a sixty-one year old man, and the second being the apparent enthusiasm of F1 management for the content of the film. I get that FOM had to buy in to the movie for it to get made, but it makes me uncomfortable sometimes when the subject of a film embraces it a little too enthusiastically.
Fortunately, F1 far exceeded my humble expectations for it, delivering a genuinely memorable viewing experience and arguably the best car racing movie since 2019's dynamite Ford vs. Ferrari.
Racecar driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) once a rising star in Formula One in the 1990s whose F1 career was cut short by a horrific accident, has spent the last three decades driving in a variety of different racing series all over the world, living out of his van and driving from one race to the next. One day, however, an old teammate of his, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) tracks him down after he has just won at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and makes him an offer he cannot refuse: a chance to drive in F1 again. Ruben owns a team, APX GP, that has spent the last three years at the back of the grid, without scoring a single point. It's midway through the season and Ruben is desperate for results, or else the board of directors will sell the team. He's got a talented but arrogant rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) driving one of his team's two cars, but the other seat has just been vacated by a driver jumping ship. Sonny refuses at first, but then realizes that he has unfinished business with F1 and takes the plane to England.
From there, he finds himself thrown back in the deep end, clashing egos with Pearce and butting heads with his new bosses, Team Principal Kim Bodnia (Kaspar Smolinski) and Technical Director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and of course, having to face off against 20 of the most talented racecar drivers on the planet. Will Sonny and Joshua be able to put aside their differences and work together long enough to get the team the results needed to keep it from getting sold off and scrapped?
Chances are if you've seen a sports movie with plucky underdogs as the heroes, you've seen everything this film has to offer, story-wise. Director and co-writer Joseph Kosinski doesn't seek to break any new ground here, and none is broken. Fortunately, though, he fills his cast with capable actors who deliver solid performances and have good chemistry together. Brad Pitt has been touted by several reviewers as having a crazy charisma that sells the movie, regardless of how improbable it is that someone his age would be allowed to race a Formula One car in any kind of competitive capacity, and while I'm inclined to agree to an extent, I also think it helps that his other cast-mates are up to the task of selling this somewhat absurd fantasy as well, which is about as believable as a superhero movie when one really thinks about it. In particular Pitt and Bardem have a great chemistry together as former teammates turned driver and team owner and they effectively convey the notion that they have history together, even though the script lets them down a bit at a key point in the film.
Honestly, the less said about the script, the better. The attempt to sell the reasons for why a fifty-something would even be considered for a driving seat, complete with the obligatory tragic backstory, was heroic but still chuckle-inducing, almost as much as the "built for combat" line that featured heavily in the marketing. Fortunately, like I said, even the very worst dialogue and story contrivances were mostly masked by some really winning performances from the whole cast.
Charming performances however, would mean nothing if Kosinski and his crew didn't get the most important thing right: the racing. I am very pleased to report that in this respect, the film not only delivers but exceeded my already lofty expectations for how good the racing would look. For all its silliness, after all I deeply enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick for its jaw-dropping flight sequences, and so I knew what kind of technical proficiency Kosinski, cinematographer Claudio Miranda, and their various crew members brought to bear on this production, and suffice it to say, they brought their "A" game. With dozens of car-mounted cameras Kosinski and company put viewers right in the thick of the action, capturing all nine races depicted in a truly breathtaking fashion, especially when coupled with the amazing sound mixing that, if anything, flattered the 1.6-liter turbo engines that aren't quite regarded as the most sonorous power plants the sport has ever heard. Still the races look and sound amazing, in no small part to the seamless mix of practical photography, incredible stunt driving and some judiciously inserted computer-generated imagery. In this respect, this film stands head and shoulders over what James Mangold and his crew delivered in Ford v. Ferrari, which is no mean feat.
Oh, and film music deity Hans Zimmer delivers an absolute banger of a music score. This is a bit of an update from his last Formula One-themed movie, 2013's Rush, and his work here is just as good as it was back then.
I caught this in IMAX, and while for some reason the dialogue where I watched was compromised by echoes, in every other respect the experience was elevated by the amazing images and the roar of those incredible machines, so to my mind, it's worth the premium. Whatever its flaws, this is definitely a movie I was glad to see in a movie theater.
8.5/10
