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A former Formula One prodigy, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is an aging racing driver who maintains a nomadic life, constantly moving around in search of new challenges and never staying in one place for too long. After winning the 24 Hours of Daytona, Sonny is approached by his former teammate, Rubén Cervantes (Javier Bardem), with a too-good-to-be-true offer: a seat in Formula One as part of the Expensify APXGP team. Although hesitant, Sonny agrees and travels to the United Kingdom, where he meets the other members of the team, including fellow driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon). Sonny's arrival upsets Joshua, who immediately seeks to outshine his teammate on the track and at press conferences to impress the investors and ensure his career has a future. It's a tense proposition for the two racers, but a lot is riding on their cooperation on the track. Indeed, the season is make-or-break for Rubén because the investors plan to sell the team, and Sonny and Joshua are his last hope.
Although Sonny and Joshua appear like stock-standard character types, their relationship is anything but ordinary, and their hard-won bond is one of the most joyous aspects of the narrative. Neither man is perfect, but the movie does not feel the need to cut one down to build up the other; instead, they both have things to learn. Sonny is a seasoned professional, but he needs to adapt to the F1 vehicle and learn how to work effectively as part of a team, including following orders and giving up his position in a race. Joshua, meanwhile, is a cocky newcomer, and he perceives Sonny as an old fossil who does not belong on the track. F1 contains traces of Top Gun: Maverick in this respect, as Sonny arrives on the track as the veteran "old guy" who needs to earn the trust and respect of the dubious team. Subtle aspects give the character genuine dimensionality, such as Sonny's addiction to throwing cards or his pre-race routine of placing a card in his pocket. Sonny also races not for the money or the trinkets, as he constantly moves around as a gun-for-hire, living out of his van. A bit of romance emerges between Sonny and Kate, but the subplot thankfully does not detract from the narrative's focus.
Brad Pitt turned 60 during the production of F1, but he doesn't look it, as the actor sports an incredible physique. Pitt oozes cool and machismo, and it's refreshing to see a male character who is not subject to humiliation or deconstruction. Damson Idris is another standout, as the charismatic young actor brings immense believability and dramatic gravitas to the role of Joshua Pearce. It's a star-making turn for the performer. A superb supporting cast surrounds the two men, with not a single dud performance in the ensemble. The two standouts are the Oscar-winning Javier Bardem and the Oscar-nominated Kerry Condon, while contributions from the lesser-known performers are uniformly excellent across the board. F1 also features real-life Formula One personalities, including seven-time World Drivers' Champion Sir Lewis Hamilton, who also served as one of the film's producers.
Several racing sequences occur during F1's beefy runtime, and these set pieces do not disappoint. Real-life Formula One races are repetitive at first glance, as the cars zoom around the same track dozens of times. However, Kosinski and Kruger miraculously make the racing sequences highly involving and exciting, incorporating the necessity for strategy amid the high-speed racing. As Sonny and Joshua learn to work together, they collaborate strategically to the benefit of the team, including giving up positions and, in some cases, deliberately damaging their racecars. Naturally, Sonny gets away with a lot, and it is hard to imagine a real-life racer doing all of these things without receiving a ban, but F1 is a movie, after all. The characters are also fallible, as they make mistakes while zooming around at high speeds. Although one crucial accident scene is admittedly predictable, it is nevertheless effective and hard-hitting and will likely leave you on the edge of your seat, desperate to see if everyone will survive. On that note, the movie's conclusion is equally nail-biting and edge-of-your-seat, as it's easy to root for Sonny and Joshua to succeed during the final race.
On a technical level, F1 is virtually flawless. Kosinski wisely retained Top Gun: Maverick's cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, and composer, Hans Zimmer, who also scored Ron Howard's 2013 Formula One film Rush. Although countless movies feature races and car chases, the racing sequences in F1 are genuinely one-of-a-kind, as Kosinski approaches the set pieces in the same way he approached the jet action in Top Gun: Maverick: it's all real. Without a hint of CGI or digital manipulation, the racing scenes are the result of real drivers putting their lives on the line at high speeds while tiny, custom-built Apple cameras capture the action. Astonishingly, Pitt and Idris reportedly did their own driving, reaching speeds of nearly 300km/h, which enhances the movie's sense of authenticity. With a reported 5,000 hours of footage to sift through, Oscar-winning editor Stephen Mirrione (The Revenant) had his work cut out for him, but he somehow managed to turn the dailies into fluid, coherent, and enormously engaging action sequences. F1 looks and sounds sensational, with slick visuals and a nuanced, rousing sound design, while Zimmer's score is unsurprisingly exceptional.
Despite clocking in at a mammoth 156 minutes, F1 does not feel overlong - the time flies by as there is always something to keep your interest, from the action set pieces to the sharp character interactions. The narrative is not exactly surprising, but it is engaging. Furthermore, F1 is not generic, committee-designed slop that bows to studio demands in a foolish attempt to expand its appeal; instead, Kosinski and co. stick to their guns, designing an outstanding summer movie with old-fashioned machismo, an uncompromised vision, and some of the best action set pieces of the year. And ironically, due to this approach, it will appeal to a wide audience, as it's challenging to imagine anybody leaving the cinema feeling unsatisfied by this rousing crowd-pleaser.
9.2/10
