Tag: film

The pleasures of F1 are engineered to lull the brain. It’s muscular and thrilling and zippy, even though at over two-and-a-half hours long, it’s exciting road trip. Sonny (Brad Pitt), a 50-something driver who spun out in the ’90s, agrees to compete in the globe’s most prestigious racing event to salvage his reputation and APX, the failing team of his buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem). What he’s really chasing is a sense of fulfillment he can’t, and won’t, catch. It eludes him like a mechanical rabbit on a track.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski from a script by Ehren Kruger, F1 has an amiable romance with a likable automotive engineer, Kate (Kerry Condon), and a bit of cautionary flag-waving about the financial shenanigans taking place off the track. But really, it’s built from the same chassis as Kosinki’s last movie, Top Gun: Maverick. There’s the A-list reckless elder, his upstart protegee (Damson Idris) and a high-octane mission that’s damn near impossible, with lots of speedy action intercut with scenes of its alpha male movie star out of his helmet and grinning for fans.

Hans Zimmer’s dynamic score, a churning and sculpted piece of music, matches Stephen Mirrione’s elegant editing. The music is also wonderfully juxtaposed by cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s frenetic lens. We jostle within the car and throttle around tight curves. Sometimes the sequences match Days of Thunder (Jerry Bruckheimer is also a producer here), particularly when Sonny angles to go high. At other points, like when APXGP buys into Sonny’s combative racing style, F1 becomes its own snarling beast with little grounding in reality, but is entertaining nonetheless.

It’s a tire-spinning, adrenaline-fueled blockbuster smash. The fully immersive experience is the quintessential tale of thunder meeting lightning, old against young, veteran versus rookie, that soars. Whether you’re here for the speed or the story, F1 delivers just enough of both. Fueled by Brad Pitt’s effortless charisma, F1 The Movie, is a velociously loud and exceedingly exciting motion picture that deserves to be experienced on the biggest screen possible.