REEL | Racing 'F1' – Brad Pitt Feeds His Need for Speed

"Create your own space. Hope is not a strategy."

Apple Original Films / Warner Bros. Pictures

Aging superstar Brad Pitt (also a producer) hits the track as a washed-up but still talented racecar driver cashing in his last shot at glory in blockbuster director Joseph Kosinski's expensive motorsports action drama, succintly titled F1®: The Movie (as it's being marketed as) after the highest class of global open-wheel, single-seater formula auto racing, Formula One.

Teamed up with a young, inexperienced, and volatile but gifted hotshot rookie driver (Damson Idris) on the rise, Pitt's Sonny Hayes must reform his past failures, drive fast, and pull off a miracle to win it all as part of a dysfunctional team, risking everything. Pitt is suitably surrounded by a fine international supporting cast led by Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon, with her mesmerizing Irish accent, as his primary team members, who are both deeply skeptical yet hopeful that Sonny can help turn all their fortunes around to compete in F1's treacherous worldwide racing circuit.

From many of Kosinski's team behind his successful Top Gun: Maverick, legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Ehren Kruger join the similarly themed contemporary speed-based epic film that trades in the aerial-based naval armed forces for the classic sports drama formula. Crisscrossing across the entire globe, F1 spares no expense in its standard but stunning telling of the autoracing team's many dizzying highs and lows.



Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda (another Kosinski regular) frames the visceral racing action with a crisp but glossy sheen that makes the racecar driving sequences so exciting and propulsive in their composition. For anyone inclined to be captivated by sports drama, this film makes the repetitive nature of the many laps and races thrilling by explaining and giving each pass, lead shift, tire change, and finish meaning through fleshed-out stakes revolving around personal redemption.

Aided by celebrated composer Hans Zimmer's pulse-pounding electronic musical score, F1 grounds its motorsports competition with a depth and framing that enhances its dramatic storytelling. By replicating an entire Formula One season, the filmmakers build camaraderie and our investment in the racing team. Everything pays off in the dynamic last race of the season when audiences are captivated by the final results. How it fully creates a fictional but highly detailed eleventh F1 team, "APX GP," with its own sponsors, branding, and history is remarkable.

Pitt and Koskinski make the high-octane F1 such an exhilarating, rip-roaring piece of summer entertainment from start to finish. It looks, sounds, and feels dazzling as a piece of broadly crowd-pleasing blockbuster spectacle for mainstream audiences. Not much of it reinvents the well-worn underdog sports movie formula despite exploring a world backed almost exclusively by mega-corporations and billionaires. It hits all the right but expected feel-good notes while showcasing the appeal of autoracing as a sport.


More | YVArcade / Indiewire / Inverse