Vroom, Vroom! ‘F1’ Is a Sleek, Flawed Star Vehicle

CARS GO VROOM! but people only chug along in the technically revved-up but dramatically dumbed-down F1: The Movie.  Director Joseph Kosinski viscerally propels viewers into the haptic-heaven driver’s seat of Formula One but only levels out the personal pathos at half a tank. Prep for that old narrative warhorse “The Old-Timer butts heads with The Rookie,” ladies and gents, and don’t be surprised when character interest stalls out before you round the two-hour mark of this 156-minute speedway.

F1: The Movie  ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Written by: Ehren Kruger
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Kim Bodnia, Javier Bardem
Running time: 156 mins

But boy, that Brad Pitt is one magnetic sexagenarian. He’s one of the very few Hollywood actors who can match a marquee brand like Formula One with equal amounts of high-octane charisma. And the combination is absolutely combustible, with the handsomely grizzled hunk slipping hand-in-glove into the narrow contours of his driver’s seat. Talk about a star vehicle!

Kosinski’s last movie was Top Gun: Maverick, so he knows well how to pair a legacy matinee idol with need-for-speed hardware and make everything thrum thrillingly. Just like that Cruise-headlining billion-dollar boon to the global box office, F1 also proves that an immersive cinematic experience — ideally in an overwhelming IMAX theater with overpowering sound system — is the most exquisite way to experience the sensation of jockeying for pole position on a swerving track while driving 200mph.

The racing scenes are simply sublime — shot with startling intimacy on a grand scale, cut kinetically, mixed with thunderous crackles — and Kosinski is smart enough to make sure most of the movie stays on the race track. Nine race tracks, actually: a globe-trotting nonet of exotic Grands Prix that allows the movie to hopscotch from the United Kingdom to Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Abu Dhabi and include such floridly-named sites as Hungaroring, Monza, Vandvoort and Autodromo. Avid Formula One fans will already know these names and places by rote, but the uninitiated will thrill to such a richly detailed sports subculture.

If only the paint-by-numbers pathos was just as nuanced. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a once-promising Formula One wunderkind in the ’90s who literally flamed out after a devastating crash during the Spanish Grand Prix. Now, after two divorces and one annulment — plus a brief stint driving a taxi — he’s a recovered gambling junkie living in a van who occasionally dabbles in one-and-done NASCAR stints like winning the Daytona Cup for someone else’s team. Damaged goods! But also older and wiser.

In contrast, Sonny’s early-days racing autobro Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) has become a more conservative success, but is now also hitting hard times, as the owner of the last-place F1 team more than $300 million in debt. With half a season left, he tracks down Sonny and offers him an open seat on his team — a Hail-Mary hire that’s also a too-good-to-be-true shot at being the best driver in the world. Spoiler: the film may or may not end with the two of them yelling “We are the best in the world!”

Young hotshot Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris, not related to Idris) doesn’t take kindly to Sonny, especially after Sonny underwhelms the team by crashing one of their million-dollar cars on a test drive. He’s rusty! But he’s also got a lot of untapped potential — and a few clever insights into how to game the system, pushing the envelope on penalties and violations in order to slow down his adversaries and give Joshua a fighting chance to crack the top-ten.

He also has some key design insights for female technical director Kate McKenna, a comely Irish lass who used to work at Lockheed but left that job, as well as an unsupportive husband, to make racing cars more aerodynamic. Or something. Her motivation is kind of fuzzy, but her purpose is to play the fetching and marginally age-appropriate romantic foil who chastises Sonny for his renegade tactics while absorbing his flirtatious remarks with a side smile.

Will he be a lone wolf or a team player? That’s the real question — although the short answer is yes, of course. There’s also a reserve driver at AXPGP: Luca Cortez (Luciano Bacheta), who people keep threatening to put on the track; but Kosinski barely shows his face in the movie anyway, so really not much of a concern.

More of a concern are all the remarkably overt logos for the team’s corporate sponsors. If you get a hankering to wear Tommy Hilfiger clothes, or buy a Shark Ninja blender, or use Expensify business software, or switch to Geico, or put an IWC on your wrist, or play EA Sports, or pick up a Mercedes-Benz, then you have F1 to blame. Surprisingly, considering that Apple paid $200 million to produce this movie, the tech behemoth is content to just elegantly slide its mainframes and iPhones into the background. Classy.

Anyway, Sonny teaches the shaggy-dog APXGP folks how to win by working the rulebook angles, tweaking their chassis, getting smartly aggressive, and generally being more humble while also maintaining his cocksure stride. He’s Brad Pitt! “I kinda like him,” says shifty AXPGP board member Peter Banning (Tobias Menzies). There’s a lot to love. As long as it involves vehicular velocity.

Related:

‘F1″: A Race To Nowhere?