F1 boasts spectacular races but never gets better than F1ne

Joseph Kosinski’s F1, a combination sports/coming-of-age/cool-aging-guy-still-has-it movie, has a lot that works. Brad Pitt has turned his movie star charisma to the max, Damson Idris proves himself a worthy young foil to Pitt, Kerry Condon is a steely romantic lead, and Javier Bardem is frequently a hoot. Hans Zimmer’s score is, no pun intended, driving. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda (a long-time Kosinski collaborator going back to Tron: Legacy) skillfully captures the beauty and the power of the sport’s famed racing machines. Kosinski’s races are clean, clear, varied, and consistently thrilling. But for all of F1’s many virtues, it’s more interesting to think about than it is enjoyable.

Pitt is Sonny Hayes, a brilliant driver who will race just about anything, anywhere, so long as he gets to drive, and anyone he’s working with matches his commitment to the craft. When he was younger, he was an F1 racer who could have grown into a rival for the sport's legends in the early 1990s, particularly the late Ayrton Senna. A disastrous accident forced Hayes’ retirement and led to several decades of drifting through a string of failed romantic relationships, an infamous career in professional poker, and ultimately contentment behind the wheel, whether in any race that will have him or the capital letters Impossibly Cool Van that he’s made into his home. 

Enter Ruben Cervantes (Bardem), a racing contemporary and longtime buddy of Sunny’s, currently up to his eyeballs in debt for his dead-last-in-the-rankings F1 team Apex and facing a rebellion from his board. With half the season left, Ruben seeks out his old friend in the hopes that he might be able to help turn things around and help promising rookie Joshua Pearce (Idris) turn his promise into concrete victories. Despite his hesitation, self-doubt, and gargantuan ego, Sunny takes Ruben’s offer and joins Apex as a driver, mentor, and spiritual team leader. F1 racing is the thrill of a lifetime, a test of skill and nerve that very few things can match. It’s extraordinarily dangerous, and while the best racers in the world (numerous real-life drivers play themselves) aren’t murderous road warriors, they’re just as keen to win as Sunny and Joshua. The road to the victor’s podium is long and winding, even at F1 speeds (read: over 200 miles per hour).

F1 feels like the platonic idea of a 1990s action blockbuster, down to the presence of producer Jerry Bruckheimer. There are a few different styles of comedy. Sunny’s grizzled romanticism and Joshua’s fresh-faced cynicism clash with each other. Bardem makes Ruben’s frazzled antics a consistent hoot. There’s some solid steam in Condon and Pitt’s romance, which is born from their shared passion for victory and their mutual recognition of each other’s intense drive (sorry). Granted, the direct participation of the sport’s organizers and leading athletes, including their bleeding edge, incredibly expensive technology, imposes hard limits on poking at the wealthy and powerful. But F1 does get a few decent jabs in at those who insist on reducing racing to one more line that needs to be going up at all times. 

And those centerpiece races? They’re spectacular. Kosinski has had an eye for creatively choreographed, thrilling action since he debuted with the darn good Tron: Legacy back in 2010. The camera setups he and his creative team developed for Top Gun: Maverick return for F1, and he and Miranda utilize them to emphasize the claustrophobia and power of an F1 machine and the tremendous skill required to drive them competitively. They combine this with marvelously captured racing footage that consistently uses the geography of the circuits well and makes space for variety—each of F1’s races has a distinct narrative that Kosinski and company use to work in striking beats, from come-from-behind thrills to horror at how easily even a precision engineered piece of high technology can turn into a potential death trap. It’s splendid work, and the reason to see the film.

Would that Sunny Hayes were as compelling a character as he is a driver. Pitt gets to break out his movie star charms and the ability to embody disappointment that has given way to acceptance, which made his turn as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood work so well. But, even with flashbacks to Hayes’ younger days and his fateful crash, something is missing. Kevin Flynn and Pete Mitchell’s regrets in Legacy and Maverick were effective because of the long gaps between their first films and Kosinski’s sequels, and because Jeff Bridges and Tom Cruise could work those gaps into their performances and use their original works as a point of contrast. Hayes doesn’t have that resource, and so while Pitt isn’t doing bad work, the passions and regrets that drive him feel a bit flat. Pitt falls back on his charisma, which remains considerable, but Sunny never quite clicks. There’s a hollowness to him, and it extends to F1 as a whole.

Again, this may be the inevitable consequence of making a movie about a sports league that directly involves many of the league’s real-life athletes and players. Part of F1 the movie’s job is to put F1 the sport’s best foot forward. On that front, it succeeds. The racing is exciting, and the work that goes into competition, from design to construction to training to the race itself, is interesting. On the other hand, this imposes some hard limits on the character work and ultimately the picture’s stakes, preventing it from matching Kosinski’s earlier work. Tron: Legacy is a film I’m deeply fond of. Oblivion is rock solid, utterly gorgeous science fiction action. Wildland firefighter drama Only the Brave deserves a broader audience than it received during its original theatrical run. Top Gun: Maverick is a superb blockbuster. F1, meanwhile, is alright. The craft is impeccable, and it made me want to learn more about the sport, but it’s not something I see holding up for more than one watch. It’s fine, far from bad, but disappointing.