F1 (advertised as F1® THE MOVIE) is a slick, well made, big budget car racing/Brad Pitt movie. Nothing more or less, really. It’s from Joseph Kosinski, director of TOP GUN: MAVERICK, and continues in the exploration of a stubborn, aging hot shot butting heads with, teaching, and then passing the torch to a younger generation, and it shoots race cars similar to how that movie shot fighter jets. You’re clearly looking at the actors inside actual fast moving cars, not just green screen, and that goes a long way. Of course, flying was more exciting.

Brad Pitt (CUTTING CLASS) plays Sonny Hayes, legendary bad boy racer who had a terrible crash in the ‘90s (when he had long blond hair) followed by a stint as a professional gambler and cab driver before his surprising comeback. In the opening scene he helps his old buddy Chip (Shea Whigham, NON-STOP) and his team win in Daytona, then leaves without taking the trophy. I think he’s living in a van when another old friend, Rubén Cervantes (Javier Bardem, PERDITA DURANGO) tracks him down at the laundromat and asks for help with his racing team.

Rubén used to race against Sonny, now he wears incredible suits and owns the APXGP Formula One team, who are in last place and in danger of being sold by the board if they don’t win a Grand Prix. Of course Sonny refuses the call, then changes his mind and struts onto the track looking like the coolest dude anybody there ever saw. But they’re mostly not impressed.

The script is credited to Ehren Kruger (THE BROTHERS GRIMM), story by Kosinski and Kruger. It’s a corny old formula but hard not to enjoy. Sonny’s not only the guy who’s great at driving, he also has the greatest mind for observing weaknesses and concocting so-outside-the-box-everybody-thinks-he’s-crazy solutions. So this charming handsome overachiever comes in disguised as a has-been, causes chaos, makes everyone uncomfortable, eventually turns things around, seems like he’s absolutely blown it before suddenly oh my god it seems like things are turning around? It seems like we have a better shot than we ever have and we better take it? Am I reading this right?

In his audition he destroys the car while technically matching the statistics needed to pass. Later we learn that wrecking shit intentionally and playing dumb about it is one of his favorite strategies. Everybody thinks he’s fucking up and he doesn’t let on that he’s moving technicality chess pieces around, setting up the check mate. The race commentators (the movie type who commentate only the important information we need) definitely explain what he’s up to, but I still couldn’t always follow. He’s moneyballing them or something. Seems like dishonorable racing to me.

Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon (THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, UNLEASHED) plays Kate McKenna, first female technical director of a Formula One team and designer of the car. Condon is great at what might be considered an unchallenging task of clearly wanting to fuck Brad Pitt the first millisecond she sees him. Then when he seems to be messing things up she has a look of “Oh no my crush fucked up” as opposed to the “god damn it” everybody else has.

Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris, THE COMMUTER) is the promising rookie driver on the team who resents him, tells him straight up he’s not going to show him reverence, is kind of a cocky jerk about it but also pretty much always has a right to be mad about this fucker coming in and doing this shit. Sonny pisses him off, tells him off, calls him by his initials even though he doesn’t like it, and of course much later tells him he’s a great driver. Or at least “maybe even great.” One of the main generational differences is that Joshua’s cousin Cashman (Samson Kayo, THE BUBBLE) works as his manager and makes him use social media to raise his profile, while Sonny is annoyed that he looks at his phone all the time and cares so much about fame.

Joshua is also very close to his mother (Sarah Niles, the mayor in THE TOXIC AVENGER 2023), which makes him endearing while also allowing Sonny to say he lives with his mom. She, of course, notices that Sonny is handsome.

Kate works hard to design a more aerodynamic car, but truly earns her spot as spunky female lead when she stages a colorful intervention between the two egos via a poker game/ therapy session in a Vegas hotel bar. I called out loud exactly what Hayes would do – an act of uncharacteristic un-selfishness – and that it would cut directly to Sonny and Kate finally going at it, but I’m not complaining. Formulaic but effective. Sometimes it’s predictable because it’s what really ought to happen.

During the Daytona scenes I was thinking yeah, car races aren’t really that exciting to me. I’ve already seen TALLADEGA NIGHTS and CARS, I don’t really need this. But pretty soon he’s in the Grand Prix with cameras attached to the cars and yeah actually this looks good, this is more exciting than your standard movie car race. That’s why it’s F1® THE MOVIE. Though I didn’t understand all his trickery, I did find myself pretty invested in the races. They’re well done.

There’s drama/story arcs for the pit crew, some of the investors, there are scenes where they really could’ve benefited from a cameo by Molly Shannon’s drunk TALLADEGA character. But mostly this is about the movie star powers of Brad Pitt, with some room under his arms for Condon (who gets to use her accent), Idris and Bardem. Charisma as powerful as the engines of those cars.

Early on, the music representing that Sonny is an old guy sounds pretty ROAD HOUSE, but the score by Hans Zimmer is mostly synthy, in keeping with Kosinski’s filmography. Also there’s a part that seems like a guitar riffing on Zimmer’s TRUE ROMANCE theme and/or the song in BADLANDS that it was riffing on.

It’s always funny when an actor has their name in the opening credits but their part is already over with. That’s what happens to Shea Whigham. I was hoping when Sonny told him “I’ll see you down the road” it was set up for him to get summoned for help later on, but in fact it was setting up that Sonny really has a nomadic lifestyle, “like Caine in Kung Fu. Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures,” help underdog racing teams win trophies. That makes for a pretty cool epilogue, and I won’t be the only one fantasizing about how funny it would be if Dominic Torretto pulled up in the scene like he did at the end of TOKYO DRIFT. I might not even be the only one thinking they should’ve added Brad Pitt into the scene from F9 where they added Kurt Russell into the scene from FURIOUS SEVEN where they added Jason Statham into the scene of Han’s crash from TOKYO DRIFT. We don’t have nearly enough guys there yet. We can add more.

I’m assuming that there are cameos by real drivers, but if so they must fit in more organically than in HERBIE: FULLY LOADED or whatever because nothing feels forced. I have never knowingly met a Formula One fan before and have no clue if there’s some reason for them not to like this, their official movie. I can report that a guy who doesn’t give a shit about racing and never will can still enjoy it.

I think F1 is a pretty silly thing to nominate for best picture, but that’s not the movie’s fault. I’ve been pretty into Kosinski since TRON: LEGACY even if it’s the Daft Punk score that makes it seem like his best work. Actually I think ONLY THE BRAVE is his best followed by TOP GUN: MAVERICK, which is kind of like a more spectacular but less moving version of ONLY THE BRAVE. And now this is the poor man’s TOP GUN: MAVERICK, but that’s okay. It’s pretty much exactly what it’s supposed to be. Not transcendent, but certainly competent. It feels your need for speed and it provides. There are worse things to do with IMAX cameras.