Review by Jeremy Elwood
Full disclosure, I’ve never been an F1 fan. It has always struck me as being more about money and technology than skill or ability – kind of like the America’s Cup on land. However, it is undeniably loud, fast, full of big personalities and rife with genuine danger, so making a Hollywood Blockbuster about it makes perfect sense.
Besides, the best sports movies are rarely about sport itself. The best sports movies draw out the human frailties behind superhuman achievements, tapping into the inherent high emotion of competitive challenge to, more often than not, produce something more universal, powerful and moving than the specific subject matter may truly warrant.
F1 is not one of these movies.
It does liberally borrow from a lot of those movies. Name your favourite sports movie trope, and it’s in the starting lineup here. Aging, faded star with a troubled past, looking for one more shot at the brass ring? Check. Young, arrogant prodigy who just needs someone to show him the way, so he can fulfil his destiny? Check. Underdog team facing financial ruin unless these two can find a way to get past their differences and just work together? Gentlemen, start your engines.
Brad Pitt has done this kind of thing before, notably in the far superior Moneyball. Here he plays Sonny Hayes, the former wunderkind who was setting the F1 world on fire until…well, if I really have to spell it out, then maybe this film will hold more surprises for you than it did me. Pitt is his usual charming self, and actually puts on a real master class in eye-acting, if that’s even a thing, considering that for most of his more important scenes he’s wearing a crash helmet. He’s paired with Damson Idris as the upstart Joshua Pearce. Idris is new to me, mainly credited in British TV drama, and he does ok with what is ultimately a thinly sketched character. Pearce, the fictional driver – young, gifted, British and Black – is clearly based, at least in part, on Lewis Hamilton, who in addition to turning up alongside other genuine drivers as millionaire extras, is also credited as a producer.
This movie is obviously, and I mean obviously, fully endorsed and licenced by F1 itself. The racing team that Pitt and Idris are trying to save is fictional, but all of their competitors, and their sponsors, are real. Product placement is as much a part of Formula One cars as the wheels, but throw in the myriad opportunities for a film to include close-up shots of someone’s watch or a specific (zero-percent) beer, and at times this feels like a high-end magazine advertorial come to life. The clumsy attempt, late in the film, to throw an underdone plotline about corporate greed into a film set in thisworld feels like trying to crowbar a gun control message into a John Wick movie.
The supporting cast is headlined by Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon and an all-too-brief appearance from the always watchable Shea Whigham. If the producers had spent even a fraction of their cinematography budget on a half-decent script, they might have pulled something off here. But they didn’t, and they don’t.
That budget is, however, put to good use by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. F1 does look, and sound, like the big summer blockbuster it will undoubtably be. The race scenes are shot with cameras mounted on actual F1 cars, and their speed is captured brilliantly. The races are frenetic, although the constant overriding commentary, with its determination to explain to dummies like me exactly what is going on, sounds like it was lifted directly from a video game. However, even these scenes are strangely devoid of tension. Better sports films hang on a pivotal moment – the deciding goal, the hanging home run, the missed putt – that we’re all willing to happen. Describing the condition of a tyre just doesn’t have quite the same hook.
Look, if you’re a diehard fan of F1, or Brad Pitt’s eyes, or both, you should race out immediately and buy a ticket to see this on the biggest, loudest screen you can get to.
If you aren’t, there are plenty of other, better movies based on a sport you might like that leave this one sitting stalled on the starting grid.