I think, at times, critics (including myself) say things about how certain films feel like how movies used to feel. This yearning for nostalgia in films to evoke the same feelings we experienced when we fell in love with the theater is self-limiting. As they said in The Wire – “The thing about the old days, they the old days.” Yet we have producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski, who, first with Top Gun: Maverick and now with F1: The Movie, have, in a way, reignited the feeling of a big summertime film that isn’t based on a cartoon, toy, or some other thing from an era’s childhood.
This film, F1: The Movie, is a sports film and a damn good one. It’s also a piece of promotional material for a sport that doesn’t have a significant foothold in the United States but is widely popular around the world. The film excels as an amazing cinematic experience and story while also making Formula 1 racing look cool as hell.
So F1 has a story for the races we see in this film. Here, a man named Sonny Hayes, played by Brad Pitt is a middle-aged individual who embodies the quintessential image of a race car driver. Cool as he sits with his Air Pod Max headphones on and comes in to save races for teams as he moves on in his old van that he lives in, driving from race to race and never settling down, just driving for the love of racing.
That changes a bit when his old friend Ruben Cervantes, played by Javier Bardem, pops up and makes him an offer to join his down-on-its-luck struggling Formula 1 racing team, called APXGP. He needs Sonny’s help, as if they don’t improve, he could lose his team. Sonny is leery as he had a serious crash early in his career and never raced in Formula 1 again, but this time could be his second chance to win a race, just one race in F1 before he stops racing.
From there, he meets his teammate Joshua “Noah” Pearce, played by Damson Idris, a young rookie driver who’s trying to make a name for himself and live up to his potential. From here, we have a culture class from a US driver with this European race team and staff, along with a generational clash with Sonny’s brash, risk-taking nature and going with his gut clashes with Pearce’s reliance on tech and doing things perfectly by the book methods and always listening to his team to make his decisions. All this is pretty simple, though, as we have underdogs needing to overcome and come together to get a climactic win. While it checks all the boxes and hits all the notes, you’re never going to be bored. This is one of the few times this year that I’ve heard people in the audience cheering loudly and clapping as if we were at a real race.
Brad Pitt is still a movie star. When you see him on screen, it’s like, damn, some people just have it, and when you see it after seeing other movies with younger actors, it’s like, damn, this is what the game is missing. So much charisma emanates from the screen that it’s almost as if you can grab it out of the air and hold it in your hand. His scenes with Bardem make you feel like they are these guys, and they have known each other for 30 years. Pitt has a lot of great scenes with Kerry Condon as Kate McKenna, the team’s technical director, who designs the cars. Their flirtation is movie magic, and while you know what’s going to happen, you just love to see it.
Now Damson is one of my favorites as I found him through the excellent FX TV series Snowfall; here, he gets to shine as the co-lead of this film. While they try to make Pearce seem a bit brat-like and focus on the wrong things, they quickly pivot to making him an empathetic rival for Sonny. He is the kid who consistently earns all As, studies diligently, and sees his mother Bernadette (Sarah Niles) every day. You can sense the presence of Lewis Hamilton in this character, who represents the growing population of Black racers in the world. From here, we are in a pure shonen sports manga/anime world as you’re rooting for both, and you like how they each bounce off of each other and piss each other off just builds the story and relationship more and more over the two hours.
Beyond the actors who do a fantastic job on screen, what really takes the cake are the director and the cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, and the Editor, Stephen Mirrione. These folks and all the other amazing people put you so in the perspective of Sonny and Pearce in these cars as they whip and move around the tracks from such amazing points of view the whole movie. From the steering wheel to from the driver’s perspectives and behind them to so many other fantastic views, it feels like a mix of watching a race live on TV and, honestly, the different views you can have when you’re playing simulation racing games like Gran Turismo or Forza Motor Sport. The subtle camera vibrations and pan and zooms just add to the speed of immersion of the film.
With the film knowing how to slow down and capture the out-of-car scenes in perfect composition shots that make everything grand and epic, showcasing an amazing world. Match all this up with Costume Designer Julian Day‘s stellar outfits on all these characters — and I mean amazing, these guys’ fits are crazy. This man, Brad Pitt, still looking super fly for the last 20 years on screen, with this being a high point on his run. I was holding my head through half the movie on just how much these folks is drip gawds on the screen.
Apple Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures have something truly special, a film that’s a must-see in the theater, and I hope and pray that Apple continues to do so. The WB has been having a good spring run so far, and I hope it continues with this as I think this film is one of them ones. I can’t wait to buy this in 4K, but I might have to go see it a few more times in theaters just because it’s such a great experience. F1: The Movie is just cool Hollywood filmmaking that revs up the summer and will make you want to experience F1 in real life.
Rating: A
Level of Enthusiasm: 95%
