PG-13 | 2h 35m | Sports, Drama | 2025
It’s Jerry Bruckheimer Summer Blockbuster Time, and “F1: The Movie” fits the bill admirably. Bruckheimer, who produced the film, is almost synonymous with massive summer blockbusters at this point. But there must also be star power.
It’s safe to say that as long as there are movies in Cineplexes—and especially summer blockbusters—there will always be movie stars, no matter how sophisticated AI gets.
Car Commercial
“F1” is different from other racing films in that it plays like an elaborately designed, slick, hyper-high-tech, outrageously expensive, and glamorous ad for the entire juggernaut sport of Formula One racing. It definitely works.‘Maverick’ Redux
Since it’s the same storytelling team, “F1” is basically “Maverick” but with a speedy land vehicle instead of a fighter jet. And a cloned storyline: a past-his-prime, speed-junkie bad boy seeks vindication and redemption while going up against a cocky younger rival, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). The lead actors even take a page out of the Tom Cruise playbook and do their own stunts—driving their super-hot F1 cars close to 200 mph.
Brad Pitt is Sonny Hayes, a top racing prospect in his youth, who battled the likes of Ayrton Senna on the track, until a terrible crash in the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix brought his career to a screeching halt. Having thus gained the moniker “the greatest that never was,” Sonny quit racing, gambled, burned through a few divorces, and even did a stint as a New York cabbie. Now he lives in a van (not down by the river). He’s a mercenary-type racer for hire, except he doesn’t care about money or glory. He lives for speed.
Sonny’s old friend, colleague, and erstwhile rival Ruben (Javier Bardem, wearing many exceptionally fine, tailored suits) is now the desperate owner of a last-place Formula One team. When Ruben offers Sonny a chance to regain his former glory and be considered among the world’s best, the racing world press hoots and hollers with derision. Ruben’s company will collapse unless it snags a big win, and only Sonny can make that happen. Sonny, of course, must refuse this pitch. Is he playing hard to get? Is he that burned out? You know what has to happen here.
Vroom Appeal
Sonny and Joshua may bicker, but out on the track in their silver-and-white Nomex fire suits, they resemble luminous demigods and Pitt epitomizes movie star wattage. Fighter pilots talk about “zooming and (sonic) booming.” “F1” delivers on the zooming and vrooming.
Director Joseph Kosinski knows the film’s subplots—a smarmy corporate investor (Tobias Menzies) and the team’s tech director and love interest (Kerry Condon)—are basically filler. Kosinski’s stated goal here was to plunk down the most authentic car racing movie ever made. From a purely technical standpoint, he nailed it.
Tech Overload
“F1” is configured to rivet ADHD-suffering audiences via the eye-popping techniques of video games. It’s successful to a point, but there’s only so much nonstop whizzing, zooming, and vrooming the brain can handle. It needed a touch more lyricism. There’s a wonderful scene when Sonny explains the flying sensation of being in the zone, and how it’s really the only thing he lives for. When viewers experience, vicariously, that elation, they want more. More flying and a bit less vrooming would have made “F1” soar.
We already know that soaring is the reason Rear Adm. Chester Cain (Ed Harris) says to Maverick: “You can’t get a promotion. You won’t retire. And despite your best efforts, you refuse to die. You should be at least a two-star admiral by now. Yet here you are. Captain.”
Pitt soars here, and even though the movie keeps reminding us that F1 racing is a team sport, Sonny’s lone-wolf outlaw vibe that seeks solace in soaring is the payload. Pitt, from his smoking debut in “Thelma & Louise” to “Fight Club,” “Troy,” “Moneyball,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and many more, has fully manifested his place as the second coming of Robert Redford—one of the last holdouts of old-school, world-weary manliness that blows lesser actors off the screen. Right now, collectively, Pitt, Cruise, Josh Brolin, George Clooney, and Denzel Washington are probably the best and last exemplars of old-school star power.
