The Better Movie About Manuel Quezon: A (VERY LATE) Review of "Quezon's Game"

 directed by Matthew Rosen

written by Janice Y. Perez and Dean Rosen

I could have sworn that I reviewed this film back when I watched it in 2019. Back then I watched it with just one of my children, and we both enjoyed it quite thoroughly, whatever its flaws may have been.  I was ready to refresh my imaginary review by posting a link of it on my Facebook feed in view of the incessant chatter surrounding Jerrold Tarog's new film Quezon, a film I distinctly disliked, but to my shock I found that this review only ever existed in my mind.  

Well, it's time to remedy that.

Quezon's Game tells the apparently little-known story about how Manuel L. Quezon, President of the Philippine Commonwealth, saved the lives of 1,200 Jews who were fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany back in the 1930s, just before the Second World War broke out.  In the film, President Quezon (Raymond Bagatsing) faces the most challenging time of his presidency; the world is on the brink of war, into which the Philippine Commonwealth will undoubtedly be swept up, when he is approached by a Manila-based, Jewish American businessman Alex Frieder (Billy Ray Gallion) with a desperate plea:  asylum for Jews seeking to escape persecution in Europe by Germany's Nazi party.  It is far from a straightforward task, and Quezon finds himself having to walk a diplomatic tightrope with America, still the ruling colonial power, and even Nazi Germany, which has opened a consulate in Manila.  Though Quezon is on good terms with General Dwight D. Eisenhower (David Bianco) and Philippine High Commissioner Paul McNutt (James Paoleli), the challenge of bringing these refugees over from Europe will put their relationship to the test. Standing firmly by Quezon's side are his devoted wife, Aurora (Rachel Alejandro) and his Vice President Sergio Osmena (Audi Gemora).

There's so much to love about this film, helmed by British filmmaker Matthew Rosen. First of all, it is gorgeous. Shot in sepia against the sumptuous backdrop of a beach resort in the province of Bataan containing actual Spanish-era houses and buildings and faithful reproductions thereof, it evokes the atmosphere of 1930s Manila quite vividly. The Filipino actors like Bagatsing, Gemora and Alejandro are pretty much in top form here, inhabiting the real life historical figures they play not as larger-than-life archetypes but as humans, with frailties and doubts, capable of making good and bad decisions but often choosing the latter, especially in the face of such a tense situation. 

This brings me to another remarkable point here; with the exception of a very brief scene early in the film depicting a chase between a fugitive and Nazi soldiers, the film is entirely a "talking heads" affair, relying on acting, cinematography and music to generate and maintain the tension that the story demands.  The atmosphere evoked by the location and set decoration can only do so much without strong performances driving the narrative, and fortunately, as far as the leads are concerned, the acting is as strong as it can get. 

 

Bagatsing, in particular, truly stands out as the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth and the man who helped usher in the independent Philippine Republic, even though he would never live to see it come to pass. I first saw Bagatsing in a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire way back in 1996, and I feel he was a good choice to play Quezon, with just the right mix of debonair swagger and cautious statesman. I liked how he navigated between the three languages Quezon reportedly spoke the most: English, Spanish and Tagalog. Most of all, I really appreciated the humanity he brought to the character. His Quezon was neither a hero nor was he a villain, but a man with a conscience who was ready to do questionable things to achieve his goals. It helped that the script by Janice Perez and Dean Rosen gave him a lot to work with, but Bagatsing truly made the character his own. It may not have been a 100% true-to-life depiction (no portrayal ever is) and it wasn't punctuated by the histrionics of Jericho Rosales' performance in Jerrold Tarog's film, but it was a deeply affecting turn just the same.  Gemora and Alejandro were also outstanding in their respective turns as Vice President Osmena and First Lady Aurora Quezon.  The American actors were...competent, which is better than I can usually say about foreign actors in Filipino productions (even though this was directed by an Englishman), though the actor who played the Nazi was simply awful.  

If I had any nitpicks, it was with the largely electronic music score, which, unfortunately was a result of the film having a miniscule budget, and, well the score not being particularly good. 

Still, the movie was both uplifting and educational, a marked contrast to the highly cynical take on Quezon now playing in cinemas. There are no self-inserts of the filmmakers getting up on soapboxes in the middle of the narrative, and whatever liberties that may have been taken do not feel gratuitous.  

The best part of all is that this movie is available to watch, completely legitimately and free of charge on YouTube. I highly urge everyone to check it out.

9/10 

Nothing Personal, Just Politics: A Review of Jerrold Tarog's Quezon

 directed by Jerrold Tarog

written by Jerrold Tarog and Rody Vera

It's hard to believe it's already been ten years since Jerrold Tarog launched his "Bayani" trilogy with the narrative tour de force that was Heneral Luna, and seven years since its sequel, Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral.  Yet, here we are with the third film in the trilogy, Quezon.

Set primarily during the tumultuous years before Manuel L. Quezon (played here by Jericho Rosales and Benjamin Alves as his younger self) was elected president of the Philippine Commonwealth, the film tells the story of Quezon's ascension to the power, including the people with whom he clashed, like former President Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado), Speaker of the House Sergio Osmena (Romnick Sarmenta) and Governor General Leonard Wood (Iain Glen), and the many compromises he had to make in pursuit of his avowed dream of an independent Philippine Republic. This narrative is framed through the perception of Tarog's fictional avatar, Joven Hernando played by Arron Villaflor as a young man and by Cris Villanueva in his older years. I have a lot to say about this character later.   

There's a clear trajectory here for Tarog's historical protagonists; General Antonio Luna of Heneral Luna was easily Tarog's "purest" protagonist, untainted by any kind of corrupt motive and who acted purely for the good of the nascent Filipino nation, even to his own detriment and eventual destruction, which was largely brought about by his own arrogance.  In Manuel L. Quezon, Tarog presents the most morally compromised character of his entire  "Bayani" trilogy. 

The problem for me is that, to be properly considered compromised, there needs to be some good to go along with the bad. Even most villains in fiction nowadays are depicted as flawed people who made really bad choices, often in the name of some perceived greater good.  The problem with Manuel Quezon, as depicted in this story, is that he simply has no redeeming qualities. This film presents a deconstruction of this larger-than-life persona that is so thorough, so merciless that it borders on being a demolition job.  The man is a liar, a womanizer, a narcissist, and possesses virtually every one of the most despicable qualities of the worst of Filipino politicians. One might argue he's even the godfather of modern-day patronage politics, though the film stops just short of saying that.  To depict the man as a saint would, of course, have been idiotic, but it feels like Tarog has gone too far in the other direction. 

Every good thing Quezon is depicted as doing in the film is underpinned by some darker truth, some act of wanton betrayal of either the people who trusted him, the Filipino people or even just basic human decency.  That the film would shine a light on the darker side of a career politician who made many, many shady deals in his relatively short lifetime made perfect sense, and one appreciates the candor on display here, but the problem here is that there is no nuance, just as Heneral Luna felt somewhat like a hagiography, this is basically the complete opposite. The Manuel L. Quezon of this film is such a bastard that one even wonders how this film can be called part of the "Bayani" trilogy. Tarog even torpedoes narratives that he pushed in his previous films, such as Emilio Aguinaldo's very strongly-hinted hand in the deaths of Antonio Luna and Andres Bonifacio, by out-and-out declaring that Quezon's people made it all up. As is usual with films like this, it has been declared that creative license was taken with historical facts, so one wonders how much of Quezon's onscreen depravity was based on actual events, and how much was a product of Tarog's mind?

This brings me to the part of the film that I quite vehemently disliked; fictional journalist Joven Hernando goes from the audience avatar, a passive observer and recorder of events, to an active character in the story, who interacts quite closely with all of the principal characters in the story, and who eventually gets screwed over by Quezon when he dares write unflattering things about him.  This part was the last straw for me. This was where story went from an earnest attempt to tell the complicated, flawed legacy of one of the Philippine Republic's most important founding figures to a mean-spirited smear job. Another thing that irks me about this glaring creative liberty is that Hernando feels like a narrative crutch that Tarog leans on. Ironically, of all the three "Bayani" films, Quezon takes place in the most recent period of history, at a time when more information was available than during the settings of previous two films, which would mean that stitching a cohesive narrative together should have been even simpler given the available data. It confounded me quite a bit, then, that Tarog seemed to take even more liberties here than he did with either of the previous "Bayani" films, by expanding the role of the fictional character. 

My final critique is with the acting. Now, in the previous two films, I found the acting to be mostly beyond reproach, with John Arcilla's booming line delivery still ringing in my mind.  To Tarog's credit, he assembles a mostly competent lineup of performers here, too, but there were two things that stood out. First of all was Scottish actor Iain Glen's turn as Governor General Leonard Wood.  In the final analysis I thought Glen turned in a mostly decent performance, but I was struck by how for several of his lines early in the film, Wood had a distinctly British accent, which he fortunately dropped as the film went on. 

The biggest problem for me, though, was Jericho Rosales as Manuel Quezon. Now, I have nothing against Rosales as an actor, but to my mind, he was simply out of his depth here, and it did not help matters any that the film's makeup department couldn't be bothered to age him beyond giving him a gray dye job (or wig). Rosales is 46 right now, but the Quezon he was depicting was in his late 50s and quite haggard as a result of the tuberculosis that ravaged his body.  Sure, he mimics his voice and mannerisms, having no doubt pored over newsreels of the Commonwealth President, but too often, his performance feels like it strays into caricature, and Rosales fails to elevate his character past the teleserye villain that the script so clearly makes him out to be. 

I really, really wanted to like this film. Like its predecessors in the trilogy, it has excellent production value, and outstanding performances from the likes of Bodjie Pascua (as Aguinaldo's running mate Raymundo Melliza), Mon Confiado as Aguinaldo, and Benjamin Alves, who in a rather confusing turn plays both the younger Manuel Quezon and an actor who plays Quezon in a series of propaganda films made by Hernando's daughter Nadia (Therese Malvar) for Quezon's presidential campaign.  It has some pretty good humor and is a winner from a technical standpoint, with some pretty sharp editing and music scoring, both courtesy of Tarog. For all of that, though, Tarog has fallen short, to my mind, of the standard that he himself has set. 

I like to imagine there's a draft of the script somewhere that contains a more nuanced portrayal of Quezon, one that, while not necessarily making him more heroic, makes him a bit more sympathetic. Whatever his flaws may have been, and I'm sure there are many, Quezon managed to make a significant contribution to our country's efforts towards independence, and I feel he deserved a portrayal even just a tad more sympathetic that what we got here.

6.5/10

Riding the Zeitgeist: A Review of K-Pop Demon Hunters

 directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans

written by Danya Jimenez, Hanna McMechan, Kang and Applehans

In a cinematic landscape dominated by Intellectual Property of one sort or another, be it derived from books, comic books, video games, or even old movies, it truly is refreshing to see a new property truly take off, which what the new animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters, has managed to do since it dropped on Netflix over two months ago. A completely original film (with a kind of regrettable title that sounds like they never moved past the concept stage), this film give American animation a shot in the arm it has needed since original properties from studio giants like Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks have all been faltering.

As the title states, K-Pop Demon Hunters is the story of a group of K-Pop singers named Huntr/x, who, by day are a hugely popular music group, but by night, hunt and kill demons. The three girls Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong) and Zoey (Ji-yong Yoo) are actually continuing a tradition that's hundreds of years old, of three women fighting demons with not only martial arts skill but with the power of song. It is through this song that they maintain the Honmoon, a magical barrier between the Earth and the Demon's world that helps keep them at bay. The demons aren't easy to keep out, however, especially considering that their boss, Gwi Ma (Lee Byung Hun) hungers for souls to consume, which is why Huntr/x seek, through their music, to create the Golden Honmoon, which will bar demons from entering the world completely.  The demons, however, may just have an ace up their sleeve in the form of Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop) a handsome singer of a demon who hatches a bold plan; to fight the singing demon hunters with a band of their own. Meanwhile, things get complicated when Rumi's normally golden singing voice starts to falter on her, which may or may not have something to do with a dark secret she's been keeping from her friends. Will they be able to seal the Golden Honmoon in time to stop Gwi Ma?

Given the success of their giant-killing, Oscar-winning smash hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it's gratifying to seen that Sony Pictures Animation hasn't just leaned on existing IP to keep their slate running.  While the worldwide popularity of K-Pop may have made this movie seem like an obvious choice to make, it was still a risk to make something so culturally specific, and yet this risk appears to have paid off in dividends.

To my mind, what makes the movie work is its accessibility to non-K-Pop fans. The story lets us "normies" in on the ground floor, and even though there are undoubtedly plenty of Korean of K-Pop references that fly over our heads, the filmmakers give us characters that are somehow both ultra cool and relatable at the same time. It helps that both the animation and the voice acting does a sterling job of bringing these characters to life.

Now, I'm still not a fan of K-Pop music, but I appreciate how it propelled this movie forward in a catchy, earworm sort of way. This is the kind of thing that will eventually date this movie, I suppose, but it is definitely good fun, which to my mind is something the other big studios seem to have forgotten about. 

 This is easily worth the 100 minutes or so that it will take to sit down in front of one's TV and tune into Netflix. Well done!

9/10

Who Needs Origins Anyway? (Spoilers for Superman 2025 and Fantastic Four: First Steps)

 There's something I've observed about the last couple of comic-book based movies that I've watched that I've actually found somewhat refreshing; they appear to have done away with origin stories.  James Gunn's Superman threw us right in the thick of the action right after a few lines of text told us about how Superman came to Earth, and Matt Shakman's Fantastic Four: First Steps introduced Marvel's first family through a quick, Ed-Sullivan-show like montage depicting their beginnings in less than five minutes before diving straight into the story.  

Having seen nearly every movie based on a Marvel Comics character in theaters and having seen most movies featuring Superman and Batman in one medium or another I have to say it is refreshing to not have to sit through origin stories again. I don't know who said it first but like that person, I do not have to see Thomas and Martha Wayne get shot by a mugger to that Bruce Wayne gets inspired to fight crime as a  giant bat, nor do I have to see Uncle Ben die again so that Peter Parker learns about great power and greater responsibility. I don't have to see Jor-El sent Superman hurtling off a dying planet again, and I don't need to see Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm take a radiation bath again in order to get incredible powers.   

Dispensing with the origin means getting to explore the characters in different ways, and avoiding the slow burn that usually comes with the main characters going from ordinary to extraordinary. It also challenges the writers to find ways to make life miserable for the main characters even though their hero's journey has already been established. 

Marvel kind of did this first when Spider-Man showed up in Captain America: Civil War with super powers and a pre-offed Uncle Ben.  Eventually, the MCU trilogy provided him an origin story of sorts when it killed off Aunt May but I feel that the main reason Uncle Ben never showed up was that Marvel had shrewdly decided not to waste time telling that story again, and it's a lesson that James Gunn took with him to DC, and which Matt Shakman learned well enough to incorporate it into his hit movie.

Neither Marvel nor DC will get away with this when launching new characters, of course, but given that they will undoubtedly be dipping into the well of their marquee superheroes for many years to come, complete with the occasional reboot, it's gratifying to know that they no longer consider origin stories a non-negotiable in storytelling.  

Honoring Lee and Kirby as They Deserve: A Review of Fantastic Four: First Steps

 directed by Matt Shakman

written by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer

When Marvel sold off its various intellectual properties to stave off bankruptcy in the 1990s, one of the bigger casualties was the property that had kicked off the Marvel Age of comics back in 1961, the Fantastic Four.  Whereas other key properties like the X-Men and Spider-Man had their big screen breakthroughs in the early 2000s, Marvel's first family stumbled out of the gate with a film that was reasonably entertaining but notably less well-made than its contemporaries, followed up by a sequel that was more of the same, but which didn't make enough money to justify a continuation of the franchise. The worst was yet to come for Marvel's premier team when in 2015, back when the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already been launched and was going from strength to strength, rights-holders Twentieth Century Fox made the disastrous Fant4stic, a reboot of the franchise that was so infamously terrible it was only the second ever comic-book property to take home the dreaded Golden Raspberry Award or Razzie for worst picture. 

Ten years after that debacle, Walt Disney now owns Twentieth Century Studios, and as a result, Marvel Studios has finally gotten to take its own crack at its maiden superteam with Fantastic Four: First Steps.

 The movie kicks off in the 1960s, in Earth 828, which is a universe quite distinct from the Earth-616 in which the mainstream Marvel Cinematic Universe is set. The Fantastic Four, namely Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), his wife the Invisible Woman/Susan Storm (Vanessa Kirby), her brother the Human Torch/Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and their friend the Thing/Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), have been operating as a superhero team for four years, having gained their powers from cosmic radiation that struck them on a journey to space. They've been using their powers to fight crime and other threats to the world, and as a result, they are widely beloved.  As the film begins, they are about to welcome a brand new member to the family when they find out that Susan is pregnant.  However, their entire world is shaken to the core with the arrival of a mysterious silver alien (Julia Garner) who arrives on what appears to be a flying surfboard, who tells them that Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds (Ralph Ineson) will soon arrive to consume their world. Not about to take an existential threat lying down, the quartet head off into deep space to meet Galactus, only to find a threat unlike any they've ever faced before. 

Like DC Studios did with James Gunn's Superman, Marvel mostly dispenses with the team's origin story, recapping it in a five-minute sequence reminiscent of the very first page of a comic book, and dives straight into the action. The story is simple and straightforward, and the film is briskly-paced. The four actors who portray Marvel's most famous foursome have such wonderful chemistry together that it's easy to believe that they're a family.  They're all accomplished actors in their own right but group chemistry isn't always the easiest to manage, and yet their collective performance is pitch-perfect.  The villain Galactus is less a bad guy than he is a force of nature in this film, and Julia Garner acquits herself well as Shalla Bal, this universe's iteration of Galactus' herald, the Silver Surfer. While people may grumble that she's serving as the herald and not Norrin Radd, the better-known version of the Silver Surfer from the comic books and the previous films, she gets far less screen time and character development than the last iteration of the Surfer did, so I really didn't have a problem with the change. Ralph Ineson certainly is an upgrade from the giant cloud we got as Galactus in the 2007 FF sequel.  Incidentally, I really liked how they handled Johnny Storm's character, which ultimately played a significant part in how the film was resolved.  It was a nice bit of writing, helped along by some effective acting from Joseph Quinn that showed that there's more to the character than chasing skirt and driving around in fast cars.  

Shakman gets the most important ingredients right; he extracts sincere, effective performances from his leads, and tells a clear and engaging story, but he also gets the big, bombastic stuff right, too. The action sequences have their own distinct energy to them; they're well-staged and not shrouded in darkness or nighttime, a usual cheat resorted to in visual-effects-heavy films. Another thing worth noting about the film is the decidedly bright color palette. After years of having to endure mostly washed-out colors that facilitated last-minute changes to special effects, it was refreshing to see a Marvel film confident enough to show its effects in broad daylight for a good chunk of the film. The space sequences were also staged quite impressively as well, though not quite on the level of the best that the Guardians of the Galaxy films has to offer.  This truly fills me with hope that Marvel will be able to tackle more of the FF's otherworldly foes like Annihilus, the Impossible Man, and the Skrulls. Yes, the Skrulls, whom the MCU has embarrassingly fumbled since debuting them in 2019's Captain Marvel, deserve a proper onscreen portrayal.  The CG effects that turned Ben Grimm into the Thing were basically flawless, and while I've never had a problem with the visual effects depicting the Human Torch, even in the older movies, he looked great here, as did Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman.  

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my absolute favorite part of this movie, and it was the soaring, utterly heroic and instantly iconic music score from Oscar-winning  composer Michael Giacchino.  This is already the fourth Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise to which Giacchino has contributed music after the first Doctor Strange film, the MCU Spider-Man trilogy, and the fourth Thor movie, but to my mind, his work here easily surpasses anything he's done for the MCU before, and I'd argue it's among the very best music that's ever been composed for a Marvel film, including gems like Alan Silvestri's score for Avengers and Ludwig Goransson's Oscar-winning score for Black Panther. 

I liked Marvel's last offering before this, the dark and somber Thunderbolts about as much as I liked this, but there's something I really appreciate about a bright and hopeful movie like this. Alongside Superman, this film really is one of my highlights of the summer movie season of 2025.  

8.5/10

The Movie the OG Superhero Deserves is Finally Here: A Review of Superman (2025)

written and directed by James Gunn

I may be a Marvel guy through and through, but there are a couple of things that had me very eagerly anticipating the new Superman film written and directed by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. The first one, quite simply, was that the trailer looked spectacular and promised a very exciting time at the movies. The second was that I had virtually complete trust in Gunn based on his track record of making superhero-related films; the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy was just about the best resume that anyone could have brought along.  The third one was that this movie, based on everything I had seen and read about it, seemed very happy to embrace its comic-book roots, and not pretend to be something that the character clearly was not.

The film, breaks away from both the continuity established by the original, 1978 Superman film, which Bryan Singer actually attempted to continue with his disastrous 2006 sequel Superman Returns, and from the DC Extended Universe that was kicked off by Zack Snyder in 2013's Man of Steel.  

For this film, Gunn dispenses with telling his own version of Superman's origin story and drops us viewers right into the action. Metahumans have been on this version of earth for over 300 years, and Superman, aka Clark Kent (David Corenswet), from the doomed planet Krypton, is the most powerful of them all. He has sworn to be a force for good, because he believes that this was the reason his parents Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-Van (Angela Sarafryan) sent him to Earth, though most of the time he pretends to be a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet alongside his colleagues Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) among others.  Unfortunately, billionaire Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult does not appreciate Superman's efforts at all and, clouded by hate and envy wants to destroy him once and for all, and when he discovers a startling bit of information about Superman he might be able to do exactly that.  

I'll get straight to it: I loved this movie through and through. It was entertaining, moving and wonderfully-paced. The writing was topnotch; whatever the film's flaws may have been, writer-director James Gunn clearly gets what it is about Superman that makes him such an enduring part of our pop culture: his humanity and compassion.  Corenswet, was pitch perfect in this role, as were his castmates Brosnahan and Gisondo, as well as his fellow metahumans, the Justice Gang composed of Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabel Merced).  Special mention should also go to Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor who manages to make the guy evil as all heck but crazily charismatic at the same time. It's quite a feat.

Gunn brings out the very best out of not just his actors but his effects crews as the film's visuals are simply stunning, in a way no Marvel movie has been for years. Gunn really is an old-hand at these visual effects-driven extravaganzas, and he turns in some of his absolute best work here.

9/10 

Off to the Races! A Review of F1: The Movie

 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