Movie Review: F1

I can’t say that I’ve ever been a fan of racing, so F1 was not of immediate interest to me. But I did wind up really enjoying Ford v. Ferrari, despite initially being equally disinterested, so I went in with an open mind. Alas, while this movie wasn’t without its pleasures, it doesn’t really measure up against its Academy Award-winning forebear.

Decades after his promising career as an F1 driver came to a dangerous end, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) has been making a name for himself winning races in a variety of vehicles and leagues. His old friend and teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) pays him an unexpected visit one day, asking him to come back to F1 to help him turn around his struggling team before he is forced to sell it by his board. Hayes is reluctant, but given the name of the movie, it should be easy to guess what his ultimate decision will be. Upon arriving, his mere presence seems to instantly agitate his new teammate Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team’s technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), as well as the rest of the APXGP staff, but he oozes enough cocky charm to gradually win them over as he sets about trying to get them their first win.

None of what happens in this movie will surprise anyone, as the story by Ehren Kruger and director Joseph Kosinski works its way through a variety of cliches. Sometimes, that doesn’t matter that much, as the cast all appear to be enjoying themselves enough to lend the film a pleasant joviality reminiscent of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, a show with which this movie bears more than a few similarities. At other times however, the rote predictability drags the story down, and when that is paired with some surprisingly uninspired race sequences it’s hard not to find oneself occasionally feeling boredom set in.

Thankfully, things pick up for the final race as Kosinski seems to relocate his ability to thrill us with speed like he did with Top Gun: Maverick, and even if the story is racing to a foregone conclusion, it still manages to bring us to the edges of our seats. The endearing cast and Hans Zimmer’s smart, if underused, score get us in the desired headspace and we walk out feeling happy, which is enough. Though with so many promising ingredients in place, it’s a shame that this couldn’t deliver us more than “enough”. ★★★