A better exhilarating ride than your average racing sports drama.
Sonny Hayes (played by Brad Pitt) was Formula 1's most promising driver until a track accident nearly ended his career and his life. Thirty years later, Hayes is asked to bring the struggling APXGP F1 team to the winner's circle. Driving alongside the team's hotshot rookie, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), Hayes will learn that the road to glory and redemption isn't something you can do alone, only with a team effort.
As a layperson who watches (tolerates) whenever the Formula One World Championship rolls into Singapore, racing, on the surface, seem to be about getting from the start to finish in the fastest time possible. Thus, there is an expectation that when it comes to auto-racing films and that is there isn't much nuance to it. Once the race is over, I've lost interest in it.
Not with F1 though. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, whose last high-octane flick was Top Gun: Maverick, F1 manages to hold your attention and your butt at the very edge of the seat. Even off track, it can still keep you invested.
The race sequences are gripping thanks to the use of miniaturised IMAX cameras affixed to real race cars during the Grand Prix weekends. How the camera swivels as the cars screech on the corners and your sights are kept so close to the action that I swear I could smell burning rubber (a wasted opportunity to revisit the Smell-O-Vision tech).
Aside from the heart-stopping skirmishes on the track, there are strategies applied to the races that you would never have thought of. Who knew there was a method to Hayes' method when he evoked the safety cars to limit the speeds of competing vehicles thus allowing his teammate, Pearce to catch up to the faster opponents?
Pitt nails Hayes' bravado on the track and laid‑back charisma. While he has chemistry with Kerry Condon's Kate McKenna, the APXGP technical director, it is Pitt's interaction with Idris and Javier Bardem (who plays Ruben Cervantes, the APXGP team owner and Hayes' friend and former Lotus teammate) that really sells it for me.
In most of the movie, whenever you see Pitt and Idris' characters in the same scene, you can't help but feel crowded out by the two men's egos. It's a classic case of old school versus the modern ways of endorsement deals and media savvy. With Bardem, the relationship is a counter to Idris' unfettered youth as Bardem and Pitt quickly fall into the familiar gait of an old friendship.
It's a tad formulaic and it lags—just a little—at certain scenes... which is disappointing given how intense the racing scenes were. And Simone Ashley was cast in an undisclosed role in the movie. After filming, it was discovered her scenes, have been excised from the final cut. We have no idea what was her role in the film but
Given that this is set in the real world of F1 racing, keep your eye out on the other drivers like Sergio Pérez, Max Verstappen and seven-time World Drivers' Champion Lewis Hamilton (who also produced F1), among others.
F1 is now out in theatres.
