PLOT: Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a one-time Formula One driver from the nineties, whose career notoriously spun out following a crash, is approached by a one-time competitor (Javier Bardem) to join his failing F1 team in a last-ditch effort to keep it from being taken over. He’s paired with a brash younger driver (Damson Idris) who reminds Hayes of his own triumphs and failures as a driver during his heyday.
REVIEW: F1 is one of the most popular sports in the world, but arguably, there’s never been a definitive movie about it. Sure, one can state 1966’s Grand Prix, but that covered another era, as did Ron Howard’s more recent Rush. No one has ever tried to make one about the sport as it exists today – until now. Sporting a huge budget and unheard of access to the world of the sport, helped by none other than champ Lewis Hamilton as a producer, F1 aspires to be the most immersive racing movie ever made. And truly, that’s precisely what this is, with it an incredible big-screen experience, which makes the most of the IMAX format it was shot in, which is ironic considering that it’s produced by Apple Original Films, meaning it’s eventual home will be on streaming. Make no mistake – this movie demands to be seen on the big screen. It does for racing what Top Gun: Maverick did for flying.
I suppose this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as it comes from the same core team as that film, with Jerry Bruckheimer as the producer, Ehren Kruger as the writer, and Joseph Kosinski as the director. Like that movie, it delivers an incredible audience experience which should work just as well for people who’ve never watched a single F1 race as devotees.
Like Maverick, it’s grounded by a very human story. While that one was a quasi father/son story, F1 is more about Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes, in his sixties, finally getting the opportunity to perform at the professional level he always dreamed of later in life. Deliberately channelling the laconic Steve McQueen, who made his own classic racing movie with Le Mans, Sonny’s less of a hero than Tom Cruise’s Maverick, even if people will inevitably compare them. He’s headstrong and selfish, but also aware of his own mortality, with Pitt perfectly cast in a role that’s not dissimilar to his own Cliff Booth from Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. He’s the hotshot who’s burned bridges his whole life, and has suffered the consequences. F1 centers on his redemption, and Pitt plays to his strengths here in a role that demanded a movie star and certainly got one.
Damson Idris is likewise impressive as the upstart driver, Noah Pearce, who resents having to play second-fiddle to an old man, but grudgingly learn to respect him. Granted, this storyline is utterly familiar, but the charisma and chemistry of the actors make it work, with both Pearce and Hayes prickly enough at times that they never come off as stock characters. Javier Bardem is likewise terrific as the former racer turned team owner, Ruben, whose energy and enthusiasm for the sport kind of works as an audience unfamiliar with the sport’s entree into this world. He delivers an entertaining performance, while Kerry Condon (of The Banshees of Inisherin) also gets a juicier than expected role as the team’s technical director and eventually Pitt’s grounded love interest.
In many ways, I think the movie’s rather simple-but-effective storyline is a deliberate choice as it helps F1 feel almost like a lost eighties or nineties movie (in the best way possible), even if technically it might rank as one of the most awe-inspiring works of pure spectacle seen on the big screen in years. It’s stunning to look at, and the IMAX ratio makes the racing scenes feel like a rollercoaster ride, with Hans Zimmer also delivering an exceptional, propulsive score that ranks with his best work. While some may thumb their nose at the fact that it’s deliberately telling a familiar story, it can’t be denied that F1 is an absolute rollercoaster ride of a movie, and – like Sinners – helps make the case for theatres still being essential to a particular kind of filmmaking. Hopefully, this is the blockbuster hit it deserves to be.
