F1 the Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Naming the movie after the sport it’s about is either a supreme show of confidence or a massive oversight, which, given how many moving parts there are to this thing, is not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe they only got nine out of ten teams to Race Buds, and so they had to go with the default title. Needless to say that money surrounding this movie is off the charts and with it comes a certain amount of pomp and circumstance that it hopes to draw audiences in with. Does the spectacle and grandeur of Formula One on full display create a cinematic experience unlike any other, or is it a lot of hot air for an otherwise pedestrian blockbuster? Let’s find out!!
Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is the kind of guy who wears clichés on his sleeve, at least when it’s not covered in sponsors. He’s a burnout racer who could have been the best but found a way to screw it all up before dedicating his life to easy pay days and lowered expectations. It’s not until his old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) throws him a bone and offers him a spot on his fledgling Formula One team to try and keep them out of the red and maybe get Sonny some redemption in the process. Of course, you can’t be a veteran returning to your roots without a cocky young prodigy to take under your wing which is a role Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) fits to a tee; at least when he’s not calling Sonny old and posing for magazine ads. The two racers manage to find some success feeding off of their mutual disdain for the other’s racing style, but it’s a tall order to make it to the number one spot within the small number of races left in the season, and Sonny may not be as up to the task as he had once thought. Will Sonny find a way to get past his demons and save his friend’s team in the process? What can Joshua learn from the old-timer he’s stuck on a team with, and can Sonny be trusted to work in their mutual best interest when there’s gold on the line? Most importantly, will anyone in the theater care about any of this when the cars start going really fast!?
I suppose the title is apropos given that formula is the one word that best describes this movie, and it also comes as no surprise to me that this is from the director of Top Gun Maverick as he’s basically made the same movie again; only this time shilling for car sponsors instead of the US military. The corporate backing in this movie is phenomenally saturated as there is rarely a frame in its two hour runtime that doesn’t show a corporate logo or is advertising a line of high-end merchandise, but to the film’s credit, it knows how to spend its embarrassment of riches. I would wager that whatever they claim to have spent on this is half the actual budget after accounting for the sponsorships as well as access to F1 tracks and cars, and all that money is up there on the screen. It’s handsomely shot with Kosinski having a good eye for spectacle and momentum, and they managed to rope in a few well-known actors to fill in the non-racing gaps in the story. There’s a hedonistic itch that this movie scratches whenever we get behind the wheel of these death machines and watch them zoom around each windy turn. I’m not much of a car guy, but I always appreciate a movie that can get you invested in a sub-culture by throwing you in the weeds and really chewing on the minutia, which is when this movie comes to life and feels genuinely engaging. Everything else, on the other hand, from the characters, their arcs, and the conflicts between them, fails to find a handhold in a movie that is more concerned with how good the cars look and how shiny the logos are than in telling a story that will resonate with audiences.
It’s most comparable contemporary would be Ford vs Ferrari, and while the spectacle here is superior, it’s the only area where the two are even in the same league. Pitt’s performance is perhaps the nadir of the movie, though not necessarily because of what he’s doing. If anything, he’s in the unenviable position of carrying the film’s least interesting elements on his back and is simply there to connect the dots between action set-pieces and opulent car montages. The only two actors who come out of this not looking lost and defeated are Javier Bardem whose exuberance adds a fair amount of charm to proceedings and relative newcomer Damson Idris who at least looks like he’s fighting for the spotlight in a movie that’s barely interested in anything that doesn’t go vroom.
The movie’s goals are plain to see, but I find them somewhat contemptible. A movie that’s pure spectacle can work on those merits alone, but there has to be something more at the heart of it; a unique idea, an unorthodox perspective, or even a shlocky gimmick. It certainly has the splendor of its racing scenes to make it stand out from the crowd, which is fine for a while, but the movie can’t sustain its momentum all the way to the end as the second half winds up being a serious drag. There’s a clear turning point in the movie where it realizes how little is at stake and start to pile on conflicts which start and stop in jerky fits and spurts as they get smooshed between the car scenes, and while I could still appreciate the artistry that went into filming these sequences, there’s only so much you can do to make the races exciting once you start to creep up on the two hour mark; unless of course you start throwing in rocket launchers and blue shells.
Much like Top Gun Maverick, I feel overwhelmed being a voice of contrition in the face of such a gargantuan enterprise. Whatever the box office ends up being for this, it doesn’t feel like it needs the approval of anyone to succeed; least of all some random internet critic. It’s there to take up space because it spent the money to buy that space; in movie theaters, in pop culture, and in its inevitable and permanent rotation on cable television. I suppose it’s worth seeing in the theaters as the spectacle will be significantly diminished on a home theater system, and frankly, the spectacle is all the movie has going for it. Still, if you can get swept up in the pageantry of it all, then it’s worth a look whenever you get a chance to see it, but I’d be surprised if this replaces Ford vs Ferrari in your dad’s weekly Car Movie rotation.
The Reviewers Unite 