One must approach "F1", the latest petrol-soaked offering from Hollywood’s dream factory, with the same cautious optimism one reserves for a Formula 1 car screaming past at 200 miles an hour: it’s thrilling, it’s loud, and it’s almost certainly going to spin off into the gravel if you look at it too closely. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, who last brought us the inexplicably watchable "Top Gun: Maverick", "F1" is a film that knows its strengths—namely, its capacity to make very fast cars look very pretty—and leans into them with the subtlety of a pit crew swapping tyres in a thunderstorm. The result is a cinematic experience that dazzles the retina while occasionally insulting the cerebrum, a high-octane confection that roars triumphantly around the track but stumbles when it tries to walk among mere mortals.
Let us begin with the good, for there is much to admire, provided you keep your expectations tethered to the visual rather than the intellectual. The racing scenes in "F1" are, quite simply, a triumph of choreography and camera. Kosinski, ever the technician, has somehow persuaded actual Formula 1 teams to lend their gleaming machines to his cause, and the result is a ballet of carbon fibre and combustion that makes your pulse quicken despite yourself. The cameras, mounted on cars, drones, and possibly the occasional over-caffeinated gaffer, capture every screeching tyre and glinting aerodynamic curve with a precision that borders on the pornographic. The Abu Dhabi sequence, in particular, is a love letter to the Arabian peninsula, all azure skies and hairpin turns, shot with such crystalline clarity that you can almost smell the burning rubber and the existential dread of the third assistant director. It’s a spectacle that makes you forgive, momentarily, the fact that the film’s budget could have funded an actual Grand Prix.
The cinematography, courtesy of Claudio Miranda, is equally splendid, bathing the circuits in a golden glow that suggests God himself has a sponsorship deal with Red Bull. Whether it’s the rain-slicked tarmac of Monza or the neon-drenched night race in Las Vegas, every frame is a postcard, every shot a reminder that Hollywood can still make the world look more beautiful than it has any right to be. Compared to the gritty, almost documentary-like authenticity of Steve McQueen’s "Le Mans" (1971), "F1" is unapologetically polished, but there’s a certain charm in its refusal to pretend it’s anything other than a blockbuster. Where McQueen’s film felt like it was shot by a man who’d spent too long sniffing exhaust fumes and loving every second of it, "F1" is a calculated dazzle, a film that knows you’ve paid for escapism and delivers it by the gallon. And yet, for all its visual splendour, "F1" cannot escape the gravitational pull of its own Hollywood-ness, a force as relentless as the G-forces its drivers endure.
The plot, such as it is, feels like it was assembled from a kit labelled “Generic Sports Movie, Some Assembly Required.” Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a grizzled ex-driver coaxed out of retirement to mentor a hotshot rookie (Damson Idris) and save a struggling team from financial ruin. It’s a narrative so familiar you can recite the beats in your sleep: the early defeat, the training montage, the inevitable betrayal, the redemptive final race. If you’ve seen "Rocky", "The Karate Kid", or, heaven help us, "Days of Thunder", you’ve already got the gist. The script, penned by Ehren Kruger, seems to have been written with a checklist in one hand and a martini in the other, ticking off clichés with the enthusiasm of a pit-lane mechanic. There’s even a love interest, played by Kerry Condon, who exists primarily to gaze soulfully at Pitt and remind us that even racing drivers need someone to disappoint besides themselves.
The acting, alas, does little to elevate the material. Pitt, ever the charismatic enigma, coasts through the film on charm and cheekbones, his performance a masterclass in looking good while squinting. He’s not bad, mind you—he’s Brad Pitt, for God’s sake—but there’s a sense that he’s playing a version of himself playing a racing driver, a meta-exercise that feels more suited to a Vanity Fair profile than a feature film. Compare this to Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bhrul's turns as James Hunt and Niki Lauda in "Rush" (2013) or more recently, Christian Bale and Matt Damon in "Ford v Ferrari" (2019), where the former’s Ken Miles was a spiky, obsessive genius and the latter’s Carroll Shelby a laconic schemer, both imbued with a specificity that made you believe they lived for the smell of petrol and the roar of engines. Indeed, with both these films being biopics, it certainly makes you wonder if the racing movie itself is a genre best rooted in some form of real-life drama.
In "F1", Pitt’s Sonny Hayes feels like he’s been airbrushed into existence, a character so smooth he might as well be sponsored by L’Oréal. The supporting cast fares little better. Idris, as the rookie Joshua Pearce, brings energy but is saddled with dialogue that sounds like it was generated by an AI trained on motivational posters. Javier Bardem, as the team principal, chews the scenery with gusto, but his character is less a person than a collection of exasperated gestures and Latin aphorisms. In contrast, "Rush" and "Ford v Ferrari" gave us characters who stepped out of a real garage, their rivalries and friendships forged in the heat of actual stakes. "F1"s characters, by comparison, feel like they’ve been designed by a marketing team to sell action figures.
And then there’s the matter of authenticity, or the lack thereof. Steve McQueen’s "Le Mans" was a film so obsessed with the reality of racing that it barely bothered with a plot, trusting that the sport’s raw danger and beauty would carry the day. McQueen, who did much of his own driving, imbued the film with a sense of lived-in grit, a quality that "F1" can only mimic through its glossy veneer. Where "Le Mans" felt like a dispatch from the edge of human endurance, "F1" feels like a theme-park ride, thrilling but safe, engineered to make you cheer without ever making you think. The film’s reliance on CGI to augment its racing sequences, while technically impressive, lacks the visceral immediacy of McQueen’s practical effects, where every crash felt like a punch to the gut.
None of this is to say that "F1" is a failure. Far from it. It’s a film that knows exactly what it is—a summer blockbuster designed to sell popcorn and Red Bull merch—and it executes that mission with a slickness that borders on admirable. If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to ignore the plot’s creaking machinery and the acting’s occasional whiff of self-awareness, you’re left with a film that’s as exhilarating as a qualifying lap at Spa.
It’s just a pity that, like so many Hollywood ventures, it feels compelled to drape itself in a narrative that’s as predictable as a safety car deployment. In the end, "F1" is a glorious spectacle, a love letter to speed and style, but one can’t help wishing it had taken a few more risks, trusted its audience to keep up, and remembered that the best races are the ones where you don’t see the finish line coming.