F1 is Brad Pitt’s latest star vehicle and Joseph Kosinski’s follow-up to Top Gun: Maverick, a film that married technical wizardry with high emotional stakes, making for one of the most genuinely thrilling and effective blockbusters in recent memory. Clearly, the intent was to do the same using Formula 1 racing, trading the sky for the track and Tom Cruise for his fellow Movie Star, Brad Pitt. F1 reunites the craft team behind Maverick, with Kosinski directing a script from Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger, and collaborating with Maverick producer Jerry Bruckheimer, cinematographer Claudio Miranda, and composer Hans Zimmer.
The result is a film that very much resembles Maverick—technically masterful, effectively putting the audience in the cockpit of a racecar—but without any of Maverick’s heart. F1 looks great, it sounds great, for a second in the first half of the film there is almost something interesting going on, but ultimately, the film can’t overcome its formulaic story. Broadly entertaining films like this are built on simple narrative formulas, you know every turn F1 will make before it gets there, but believable emotions and stakes help smooth over the familiarity and allow audiences to buy in, no matter how silly or simple the story. F1 lacks believable emotions and stakes to elevate it above its own blandly formulaic structure.
Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, a one-time golden boy who peaked in the Nineties. After a devastating accident ejected him from F1, he makes his living race to race, reconciling his failure by posturing as the ultimate Cool Guy, driving for the love of it, not for anything as crass as money. Real drivers don’t care about money, says the movie plastered with so much product placement the word “Expensify” is now part of my lexicon. He is approached by his former F1 rival, Ruben (Javier Bardem, the only person enjoying himself in this movie), who now owns an F1 team called “APXGP”. Ruben’s team sucks, though, and he needs Sonny to come teach his hotshot prima donna driver, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), how to win.
Joshua is more concerned with his own celebrity and sponsorships and social media. He’s selfish, on and off the track. It’s deeply uncomfortable to watch an old white guy lecture a young Black man about life and teamwork and winning—one step away from “pull up your pants”—and it’s super awkward when the film shelves Joshua’s character arc in favor of paying off Sonny’s mid-life relevancy dream. F1 misses a huge part of what makes Maverick work—Tom Cruise palpably delights in working with younger actors, feeding off their energy and bending his own Movie Star persona around their fledgling screen presences. Brad Pitt seems annoyed every time he shares the screen with Damson Idris, and not just because Sonny and Joshua don’t get along. The vibes are off.
Kerry Condon appears in the film as Girl, the team’s technical supervisor who builds sh-tty cars and is there mostly to have good engineering f-cked into her by Sonny. And Toby Menzies appears as a snaky investor engaging in shady deals, he’s there just to make That One Face (you know the one). There is also a parade of F1 stars to lend the film some credibility, to incorporate APXGP into the real world of F1 like Ricky Bobby blended into NASCAR. F1 frequently recalls Talladega Nights, but not in good ways. Mostly, it serves to highlight the satire at the heart of Talladega Nights, particularly around product placement and the wild money floating around racing. Talladega Nights has some surprisingly scathing jokes on rampant capitalism, obsession with winning, and the moral corrosion they cause. F1 is brought to you by Expensify, unironically and without comment.
There is surely an audience for F1. It is not unpleasant to look at, if you like racing, you’ll probably like this film just for its perspective from the cockpit. But beyond pure spectacle, it’s an empty experience. Brad Pitt has been wrestling with aging and legacy in his last several films to some success, mostly in Babylon, but this is a hollow and falsely modest attempt at reshaping his Movie Star persona in middle age. He lacks Cruise’s generosity with the next generation, nor does he have the wry self-deprecation that emerged in Paul Newman’s later years. There is no grace or humor in Pitt’s performance. He’s as bloodless as the machines he pilots, and as a result, F1 is sleek and beautiful and cold, as machine-like as the cars it exalts.
F1 is now playing exclusively in theaters.
