F1® The Movie Review: Fast, Flashy, And All About Brad Pitt

F1® The Movie (PG13)

Starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

A Formula One race car is essentially an F-14 fighter jet on land, so it’s no surprise that Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is tackling a film about the speed demons of the eponymous motor racing league.

Brad Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, an erstwhile racer — “the best that never was” — who’s recruited by his former teammate (Javier Bardem), now the beleaguered boss of Apex, a fictional F1 team stuck in a losing streak. Key to rebooting Apex’s mojo is Hayes mentoring rookie hotshot (Damson Idris) into becoming a team player.

Part underdog story, part comeback saga, part mentor-protégé drama (and all F1 commercial), F1 has a lot going on, which explains its two-and-a-half-hour runtime — longer than an actual Grand Prix!

The good news is, it doesn’t feel the length; it cruises along with, to quote one character, a restless “punk rock” energy. It doesn’t go too deep — just enough not to get in the way of its popcorn thrills.

If anything, it plays like a cinematic coffee table book — slick, shallow, and made for skimming — with Pitt on almost every other page, to the point of idolatry. (If you’re craving more meat and potatoes, check out the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive — which, by the way, gets name-checked in a quirky meta moment.)

Still, the real raison d’être here is the immersive racing action, which, needless to say, must be experienced on the biggest screen possible. Watching it on a TV — or, God forbid, your phone — would rob those sequences of their majestic ferocity.

By the way, if you aren’t an F1 fan, Hans Zimmer’s, er, driving theme will make you one.(3/5 stars) out in cinemas

Photo: Warner Bros Pictures/Apple Original Films 

If you like F1® The Movie, here are 5 movies/shows to watch…

1. Formula 1: Drive to Survive (2019-)

After failing to get a script called Go Like Hell — about American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles — off the ground, Joseph Kosinski turned his attention to Top Gun: Maverick. (The aborted project later became 2019’s Ford v Ferrari, directed by James Mangold and starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale.) But Kosinski was still itching to make a car racing movie. He got his wish during the pandemic when he binged on Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Netflix’s highly addictive docu-series — now in its seventh season — chronicling Formula One’s behind-the-scenes intrigue. He began an e-mail correspondence with Lewis Hamilton… and F1®: The Movie was born.

2. Days of Thunder (1990)

Tom Cruise reteamed with his Top Gun director Tony Scott and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer on this high-octane NASCAR drama. (Bruckheimer is also one of the producers of F1®: The Movie.) Thirty-five years on, it still boasts the best Tom Cruise screen entrance. Kosinski told GQ Magazine UK that if he were to make an F1 sequel, he’d pit Cruise’s Days of Thunder character against Pitt’s Sonny Hayes. “They were rivals at some point, maybe crossed paths,” he said. “I heard about this epic go-kart battle on Interview with the Vampire that Brad and Tom had, and who wouldn’t pay to see those two go head-to-head on the track?”

3. Senna (2010)

Asif Kapadia’s acclaimed documentary tells the story of Brazilian Formula One racer Ayrton Senna, a three-time F1 world champion who tragically died at 34. (In F1, Sonny Hayes is said to have raced against Senna back in the day.) Producer James Gay-Rees is also an executive producer on Drive to Survive. Senna is also the subject of a six-part 2024 Netflix biopic mini-series.

4. Driven (2001)

Sylvester Stallone reportedly wanted to make a biopic about Ayrton Senna but ended up with Driven instead. He plays a retired driver mentoring a cocky rookie phenom (Kip Pardue) — not unlike what Pitt’s character does in F1. Stallone was said to have faced issues securing F1’s cooperation, which led him to set the story in the U.S.-based Championship Auto Racing Teams (now the Champ Car World Series).

5. The Natural (1984)

Remember when Pitt was often compared to Robert Redford early in his career? Well, F1 is Pitt’s answer to The Natural — only it’s racing cars, not baseball. The 1930s-set Oscar-nominated drama follows Redford’s rising baseball star who vanishes from the scene before his career took off (“the best that never was”… you’ll hear that line in F1 too), only to re-emerge decades later to make his comeback.