What I know about Formula One racing, AKA F1, could be written on the back of a matchbox, and you would still have room to add what I know about NASCAR, the Isle Of Man TT, and the prestigious 24-hour races held at Le Mans. Despite my ignorance, I knew I wanted to see F1 as soon as the first trailer for it dropped. It looked slick, it looked predictable and cheesy, and it looked like the kind of big blockbuster that knows viewers will be happy to overlook a number of weaknesses as long as the star power shines brightly enough and the car sequences are shot well. Let me say right now that F1 more than delivers on those two main fronts.
Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a broken older man who loves to race cars, and is very good at racing cars. He doesn't have any celebrated career though, having (literally) crashed out of F1 years ago in an accident that changed his entire life. He's invited back by an old friend though, and that old friend (Ruben Cervantes, played by Javier Bardem) needs his racing team to score some points. Even just one point. It's halfway through the third season, and if no points are won then Cervantes will lose his team, and he's sunk far too much money into it to survive that embarrassment. The car isn't good enough to win races, but Hayes knows how they can gain some tactical advantages. He just has to convince young Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) that he knows what he's talking about. And he needs the rest of the team to back him up, whether they end up working to tweak the design of the car or co-operating on some unusual tyre tactics.
Written by Ehren Kruger, with input from director Joseph Kosinski, F1 is just about as by-the-numbers as you can get. It's what you should expect when you hear that a Brad Pitt movie about F1 is being guided to completion by the steady hand of producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Many people have referred to this as simply a F1 riff on some previous Bruckheimer productions, but I think that's being a bit unfair. It's also not entirely untrue, but the entire world of F1, and the tactics we see used here to desperately grab for just some of the points available, is enough of a new landscape, cinematically speaking, to make this feel a bit more fresh than it otherwise would. Okay, we've also recently had Gran Turismo (also fun), but there are still enough differences to make this feel like a far superior film.
Everything is as good as can be on the audio and visual front. The soundtrack has a pulsating energy running throughout, whether in many of the songs used or in the score from Hans Zimmer, and the camerawork that puts viewers as close as possible to the driving action is absolutely incredible. Remember how you felt when watching actors in fast planes in Top Gun: Maverick? Kosinski repeats that sensation here, and it's somehow just as thrilling, despite our leads all being much closer to ground level.
It's okay to view the car as the star here, and anyone who loves racing cars will enjoy the footage displayed here, but it's hard to deny that there's also a handful of people cast perfectly in roles that absolutely lift the whole movie. Pitt is a great damaged hero, and still allowed to learn a lesson or two during his onscreen journey (although that journey is more literal, this is not a film looking to take him on some astonishing character arc). Bardem hovers around the edges of every scene just enough to maintain the required extra suave quotient, something he does effortlessly. Idris has to portray talented and cocky, which he does, until he finally starts to learn from those who have more experience under their belts, which he also does. Kerry Condon and Kim Bodnia are equally good as two very different, but invaluable, members of the team, with the former actually turning out to be the real hope for a team needing to claw at every opportunity to gain a fraction more speed on every lap. Tobias Menzies is a smug exec, Sarah Niles is the concerned mother of the character played by Idris, and Simon Kunz is enjoyably irritating as the reporter/pundit who keeps underlining just how bad things look for any team relying on Sonny Hayes to help them find some consistent winning form.
You will see better movies this year. There are better movies starring Brad Pitt. And Javier Bardem. AND Kerry Condon. But you won't be thinking of any of those movies when this film starts to work its magic. You'll be enjoying the roar of the engines, the thrill of the race, and the fun interplay between all of the main characters. I was enjoying myself so much that it was only after the credits rolled that I made a long-overdue pun about the races being won by . . . Pitt stops.
8/10
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