In 2022, director Joseph Kosinski brought us the sequel we never knew we needed: Top Gun: Maverick. It was easily one of my favorite movies of the year (I may have even cried as soon as I heard the familiar score in the opening credits). When I heard Kosinski’s name was attached to F1: The Movie, I was intrigued.
It’s clear almost immediately that F1 is Maverick on land. An aging ace comes back for one more moment of glory, despite being a bad boy and kind of a fuck-up in his field. But those who know of his legendary past begrudgingly admit that he may be The One. The One who can bring it all home.
Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a hotshot race car driver who had his heyday in the 1990s. He was going to be Formula 1’s next big thing until a horrific accident. No, Goose didn’t die after being ejected, but Sonny himself was down for the count after hitting the wall, both physically and emotionally.
Fast forward 30 years, and Sonny lives in a van down by the river, with decades of one-off races, one-off girlfriends and wives, and a gambling addiction filling his resume. His old racing buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem), a blast from the past in a nice suit, comes to him in a fit of desperation. His struggling Formula 1 team is in the need of another driver to pair with their superstar rookie (Damson Idris), to save what has been a disaster of a season. Pay for play? Sonny is in. #Winning!
And… um… that’s really the whole plot.
Damson Idris holds his own as rookie driver Joshua Pearce, conveying a young talent who is kind of a hothead but is grounded by his mum (Sarah Niles). It’s kind of refreshing that his character isn’t a full-on asshole as expected, just inexperienced and a bit impatient. And because you need at least a couple ovaries in the film to provide some sexual tension, the wonderful Kerry Condon shows up as Kate, the team’s engineer who uses NASA-level technology to design the fastest most combat-y race car for the team. Condon provides some soul and intelligence to the proceedings, to counter the affable but kind of poorly-developed slacker appeal of Pitt’s Sonny.
But we aren’t here for characters of any depth, just the charisma of the beautiful! The true star of F1 is the racing. From what I’ve heard, Kosinski again stuck to the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, creating an IMAX movie with in-your-face, real, non-CGI action. Per the production notes, cameras were strapped onto real F1 cars, and both Pitt and Idris drove real F2 race cars in scenes. The results are thrilling. Try not to lean into curves with the drivers as they struggle to avoid crashing into walls while jostling for position. Gasp as contact is made between machines racing at a couple hundred KPH, and wince as wheels and other important-looking pieces of metal go hurtling off into space.
How true fans will respond to F1: The Movie, I honestly don’t know. The bone that they are tossed is that real F1 drivers are all over the place, as much of the film was shot at actual Grand Prix races, with ejaculating champagne bottles everywhere. But for those of us who are casual, popcorn-munching looky-loos, the film is a visual treat. The races dominate (and there are a lot of them), and rather than using an internal monologue for the characters, we instead listen to color commentators announcing the action. This works both for a narrative device for the competition but more importantly as a crash course (so to speak) on the rules and strategy of Formula 1 racing. I, at least, learned something.
I’m sure that naysayers will complain that just like the Top Gun and Maverick were giant ads for the U.S. Navy, F1: The Movie is simply a giant ad for Formula 1. And they’d be absolutely right. Better reserve your tickets for Vegas now!
