F1®: The Movie (dir. Joseph Kosinski)
By: Adam Freed
F1®: The Movie is Joseph Kosinski’s big, loud, expensive and ultimately empty exposition machine. The Brad Pitt vehicle finds a way to miraculously underserve passionate F1® fans while simultaneously under-selling to people indifferent to the global sport. Are the cars shiny and fast? Absolutely. Does Pitt look fantastic in a racing suit? Of course he does. But intelligent moviegoers deserve more than that don’t they? The days of Michael Bay serving heaping helpings of Pearl Harbor (2001) all over the theatrical public and expecting a flood of applause are surely in the rearview right? Apparently not. This isn’t to say that there won’t be an audience for the film, as sweltering summer days have a way of summoning weary audiences into the cooling comforts of dark theaters. There must be a collective elevation of expectations when it comes to big budget filmmaking that holds productions accountable for delivering at least the flavor of steak to go along with all of the sizzle. These are concerns that haven’t vexed audiences as of late with massive budgeted productions like Dune: Part 2 (2024) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) threading the needle of scale and substance admirably. The legendary status of Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick (2022) is unmistakable, yet the director unfortunately provides evidence as to the existence of regression to the mean when it comes to his latest project.
One of the most confounding aspects of F1®:The Movie is the half heartedness with which it attempts to shoehorn its primary characters into a rinse and repeat story that chooses to omit any form of development. Heard this one? Aging hot shot driver Sonny Hayes is reckless but capable, his “loose cannon” (think Tom Cruise’s Maverick) approach has burned far more bridges than it has built, resulting in his financial woes and underemployment. Hayes has the opportunity of a lifetime when he is approached by former racing peer, turned desperate team owner Ruben, a playful Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), who wants Sonny to team with arrogant rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). Insert a comically attractive love interest in race team technical director Kate, embodied by Irish actress Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), and just like that all of the pieces are in place for a predictable trip around the track.
As Hayes, Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Se7en) certainly looks the part, but never injects any life behind the eyes of the character. He drives fast, makes risky moves and smiles devilishly, but all of that is surface level performance. Pitt is a better actor than he is given an opportunity to be in F1® but even in the film’s most dramatically poignant moments his humorously lengthy speeches ring noticeably hollow. Through a murders row of archetypal characters and a barrage of increasingly irritating expository dialogue, Joseph Kosinski’s high priced passion project amounts to little more than a Formula One marketing program and cameo machine. In fairness, the intricacies of F1® racing most likely go above the head of the average person, but the mind numbing amount of verbalized knowledge about tire pressure and pitstops that is echoed by secondary and tertiary characters comes across as amateurish.
Very rarely is a vibrant soundtrack something to complain about, and although F1® includes many recognizable and crowd pleasing needle drops, their frequency, and the way in which they are used to plaster over the missing dramatic stakes of the film feels apologetic for a story that wholeheartedly fails to earn the concern of its audience. With a reported price tag of $300 million it is clear that the lion’s share of that money was spent in the technical realms of the film. F1®: The Movie is big, bold and shiny. There are a few sequences that race fans will appreciate due to their frenetic pace and concussive delivery. This, coupled with the built-in global audience for the sport, is likely to result in a strong opening weekend for the film. The most passionate of those fans though are far more likely to walk away from Joseph Kosinski’s F1®: The Movie feeling they’ve finished nowhere near the winners circle.
Target Score 5/10 F1®: The Movie is a big, loud, long and ultimately empty vessel. Joseph Kosinski fails to harness the same level of thrills that he did in some of his far superior prior work. Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem & Co. are not enough to save the noisy racing spectacle that is all sizzle and no steak.