A fun, albeit silly work of fiction.
A floundering team in Formula 1 racing resorts to desperate measures. Including hiring an out-of-touch older driver.
F1 – The Movie (complete with registered trademark) is the first official movie for the sport with contemporary values and appearances. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, TRON: Legacy) and starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, and Kerry Condon. It was very clearly an official movie because of all the adverts preceding it that starred F1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. It was like the dad version of a kids movie.
I have an appreciation of Kosinski’s direction. Even since TRON: Legacy, and continued with Top Gun: Maverick, there’s a focus on visuals and in-camera effects and stunts whenever possible. When this racing film was announced, I knew it would certainly look good and sound good. I am pleased to say, these have come true. But what about the rest of it?
APEX Racing, a (fictional for this movie) Formula 1 team, are struggling. Their manager, an ex-racer named Ruben (Javier Bardem) is at risk of losing literally everything. They cannot finish races. They cannot compete with other cars. Their drivers are dropping out. The Board are looking to sell the team. He turns to the only hope he has left… Brad Pitt, I mean Sonny Hayes. Another ex-racer from the early 90s who was in a terrible crash. Since then, Sonny has drifted aimlessly from challenge to challenge. But can he withstand the physical and mental challenge of F1?
I used to avidly watch Formula 1. In fact it was the only sport I watched. Despite its detractors saying it’s “just cars going round and round”, there were always surprises and characters, glamour and excitement. But I did fall off from it; my knowledge comes mostly from the “silver arrows” McLaren era. Mika Hakkinen, David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher era. So when this movie refers to DRS systems on the cars, I mostly blink and understand from context what it is.
Unless things have changed significantly, the reasons for my stopping watching it are maybe relevant today. Relevant to this review, even. F1 is a precision sport. It has got its history of hotheads and “wheel-to-wheel” racing, but the pursuit of being the fastest racing formula has ironed a lot of that out. Also, the overhanging reality of “team orders.” Everything is very by the book. To the half millimetre.
This is the reality that surely faced co-writers Kosinski and Ehren Kruger. How to inject a moviegoer experience into this rather dry (albeit glamorous on the surface) sport? Simple really. You put Brad Pitt in it and tell him to play every character he’s ever played before.
That might be tactless. But Pitt’s Sonny Hayes is embodiment of drivers past, reckless and intent on winning regardless of who he is racing against.
A lot of the film’s energy, levity, and “movie-ness” comes from him. F1 is a predominantly European affair (look at Ferrari) and its by the rulebook nature is paramount. Hayes is the only American. He blusters in and causes chaos on the track (they literally call it “chaos”, affectionately) to benefit the team. He back-talks and ignores team orders. Yet the film shepherds him along like some long-forgotten saviour. This wrinkles the contemporary Formula 1 vibe. Sure, there are consequences eventually. Obviously. But they don’t seem nearly as heavy as they should be, or dramatized nearly enough.
The owners of Ferrari would not tolerate one driver smashing up his car and the track itself to give his team “an edge”. It is absurd. What else is absurd is the romance shoehorned into this movie. Just saying, Pitt is over twenty-years Kerry Condon’s senior. It’s weird.
It could be worse, it could be Sylvester Stallone squeezing into an F1 car and humming to himself (2001’s Driven)
But this is all the negatives. If you can look at this as a piece of silly fiction, a sort of glamour veneer over the sport, it is a fun movie. Kosinski brings the same intensity to the action as he did with Top Gun: Maverick. Onboard cameras put you right in the action, and there was a little part of me that missed watching these cars zoom around. All of the greatest hits are here, in terms of tracks: Spa-Francorchamps (with its uphill chicane) Suzuka in Japan, and Silverstone, UK among others. The battle of personality is present as well; with drivers sharing a team but not vibes. Pitt and Damson Idris’s character Joshua Pearce have great chemistry as teammates. It should be noted that British Formula 1 Champion Lewis Hamilton has a producer credit on the movie.
Despite the fact Pitt is (count them) sixty-two years old, older than any recorded F1 driver, his antics are quite enjoyable to watch. Seeing a F1 car plough through those polystyrene advert boards was a delight when I was a kid, and it is still a delight now. The film trims all the fat off Formula 1 racing and gives us the good stuff. Overtaking, pitlane overtaking. Spins. Safety Cars. The strategy that teams use to get the upper hand.
If this movie is a success (and it appears to have been) it can only bring more people into the sport. Coincidentally, Americans are the hardest audience to appease for F1. Maybe this was the solution all along?
Additional Marshmallows: Kudos to whoever added The Chain by Fleetwood Mac to the trailer. The instrumental section was the theme for the sport for a very long time in the UK!
Additional, additional marshmallows: The film, and producer Hamilton, decided to include real footage for Sonny’s backstory. The 1990’s crash involving Irishman Martin Donnelly, who fell into a coma afterwards. Donnelly was consulted and was involved in the production.