Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski endeavors to bring back that legacy feeling with F1, a viscerally engaging, if narratively bland, sports drama that finds another aging megastar in the danger zone. Instead of Tom Cruise soaring in the air, we’re along with Brad Pitt on the ground this time as he zooms around numerous Formula One tracks in an open-wheel single-seater. Kosinski’s modus operandi continues to be dedicating as much screen time as possible to our movie stars in action, proving that they didn’t just tap in the stunt doubles but actually had their hands at the controls. While I imagine Pitt had more backup help in this than Cruise has in just about all of his action extravaganzas these days, the illusion remains convincing in the final product.
As F1 opens, the glory days of Sonny Hayes (Pitt) seem to be in his rear view mirror. Carrying the scar of a near-fatal crash from the mid-90s, he’s given up Formula One racing for other sports car competitions like the 24 Hours Of Daytona. Before the bubbles in his popped champagne have time to fizzle out, Hayes is visited by his previous F1 frenemy Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), whose Apex Grand Prix team is in trouble. Their rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) has yet to place top 10 in any of the season’s races and shareholders are antsy to clean house unless things get turned around. After a plot-mandated initial refusal, Hayes agrees to join the team and teach Pearce his ways of winning behind the wheel, with pit stops to strike up a romance with Apex technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon).
There’s really nothing F1 has in the storyline glove box that we haven’t seen before but most of what it pulls out tends to do the trick. Pitt and Idris go through the motions of the old gunslinger-young hotshot routine and generate a few sparks in the friction, most notably during a poker showdown. Elsewhere, Pitt has fireworks-caliber chemistry with Condon, whose Kate swears she doesn’t get involved with drivers but just can’t turn Sonny away. Tobias Menzies pops up as the closest thing to a human antagonist the film has to offer: a conniving Apex board member who doesn’t care whose head has to roll to get back in the green. Across a bloated 156-minute runtime, I’m not sure how Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger couldn’t squeeze in a third driver character to develop as a mutual foil for Hayes and Pearce.
As with Top Gun: Maverick, the aim for Kosinski and crew with F1 is in creating a sensuously overwhelming experience designed to play better in the theater rather than the living room when the film streams on Apple TV+ later this year. Perhaps no composer is more synonymous with momentous movie music than Hans Zimmer, whose characteristic onomatopoeia “BRAAAM” is ubiquitous enough to garner its own Wikipedia entry. Zimmer’s score here is more of the same — mountainous synths and pounding percussion aplenty — but there remains enough gas in the creativity engine to underline the action. Besides an early introduction scene that gives the John Reid Bohemian Rhapsody scene a run for its money when it comes to cuts, editor Stephen Mirrione does a great job commanding the flow of sequences on and off the track.
The focus, so to speak, for cameraman Claudio Miranda is to find as many creative shots possible while mainly being constrained to the inside of an F1 car so we can see Pitt behind the wheel. While he does an admirable job with whip pans and short siding, there aren’t enough contrasting shots above the other cars where we can see how the drivers’ moves affect their position in the race. It’s surprising, given Kosinski’s “you’re in the driver’s seat” ethos, how few POV shots actually make it into the movie too. Yes, Brad Pitt is still very handsome, even with his face squished under a racing helmet, but it’s to the movie’s detriment that it includes an overabundance of reaction shots instead of action shots. Still, F1 is a fine racing movie that makes it over the finish line with its undeniable star power and convincing car choreography.
Score – 3/5
More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is M3GAN 2.0, a sci-fi sequel starring Allison Williams and Violet McGraw, finding the creator of the titular AI doll turning to it for help with a dangerous new military robot based on code that was used to make M3GAN.
Streaming on HBO Max is The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, an animated comedy starring Eric Bauza and Candi Milo, which follows Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as they try to save Earth from a chewing gum-based alien scheme.
Also premiering on HBO Max is My Mom Jayne, a documentary from actress Mariska Hargitay examining the life and career of her late mother Jayne Mansfield, who died in a car accident when Hargitay was three years old.