With only nine races left in the season, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) finds himself at risk of being forced to sell his Apex Formula One team if they do not begin to place and earn some points.  To do so, he calls on an old friend and racing partner, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), to be the teammate of young, up-and-comer Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).  The three racers all have vastly different philosophies of how to handle the cars and the track, but together, along with the eager-to-innovate tech lead Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), they begin to turn their losing season around. 

Joseph Kosinski directs F1: The Movie, a massive display of corporate synergy between Apple Studios and the F1 league, along with their various branding partners.  Coming off the aerial adrenaline rush from Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Kosinski brings that same pulse-pounding energy down from the skies and onto the asphalt.   He reteams with Ehren Kruger who helped break the story with the director before turning in a script for the 135 minute film.  Apple, putting the onus of theatrical distribution on Warner Brothers, was still betting a lot on the racing feature after a rough couple of releases across 2024, and they opened the film wide on over 3,700 screens ahead of its sad relegation to streaming. 

Kosinski brings that same knack for action to F1, giving the film a sense of prestigious blockbuster that stands out in the landscape otherwise occupied by expiring IP tentpoles.  That is not to say that F1 is wholly original in that it very much plays out like a long-form commercial for the sport and in turn, its various sponsors, but it does not feel as desperate to lure in a nostalgic audience.  In this way, it becomes somewhat even more curated than any of the other carefully guarded characters returning to the screen from the other major studios.  It is not entirely fair to hold this against the film as the partnership with the league is what allowed the film to get so close and intimate to the actual races, and the very nature of the sport requires adverts on the uniforms and the walls of the track, or it would forfeit any sense of reality.  For audiences, it becomes a necessary pill to swallow; one that, had cinematographer Claudio Miranda been allowed to simply frame the scene without having to worry about not cutting off any logos, would have let the film play out in such a way that it does not feel as manufactured to the point of absurdity.  By being so beholden to the brands, Kosinski, who sought to make a film as real as possible, ended up presenting something akin to the uncanny valley simply in its oversaturation of advertisements. 

Thankfully, though, that does not totally distract from the excitement of the races.  The camera is nothing short of immersive, building upon the driver’s seat POV present not only in other racing films, but broadcasts of the sport itself.  Kosinski never loses focus that he is in total creative control over the course of the narrative, unlike in races where the unproductivity can sometimes result in stagnation.  Here, he is able to cut away from the action in the car to the pit crew or the strategists to help amp up the drama of the situation that is not quite ready yet to blast off on the track.  Notably, he also cuts to announcers, Martin Brundle and David Croft, who spare no detail in explaining some of the more esoteric rules of the sport so that even the uninitiated can understand what is happening when there is no scoreboard to keep track of.  Simply put, Sonny’s racing style is highly unorthodox, so something of the sort is practically unseen in the racing world because it operates almost in a perpetual grey area of the rules, skirting around on technicalities and capitalizing on risks.  This proves that there is far more involved in F1 than just going around the track as fast as possible, and it transforms what appears to be a very singular and personal sport into one that involves the whole field and split second calculations. 

While Kruger’s script examines the sport rather well on a macro level, it lacks that same precision on the micro level.  As part of a team, Sonny and Joshua are like oil and water, with the latter being more in tune with the technological advances, media presence, and brand management as opposed to Sonny’s more casual, laid back, old school technique.  Since the film relies on using real drivers and other racing teams as the opponents in the larger arc of the film, the drama needs to stay within the confines of the Apyx team as the old dog and the new dog struggle to teach each other some tricks.  This is all well and good, however, Joshua has never won a race before, so it is hard to see him as an actual challenge to Sonny, especially since the script and the edit are so deeply rooted in Sonny’s corner.  Joshua struts around with a bravado that feels unearned given his ranking in the races, and the script does little to show us that he is a competent racer because it treats him like a joke. 

It is a problem that permeates throughout all aspects of the script as everything is playing out with an eye on how it can propel Sonny forward.  With Pitt in the lead, this is expected, especially since F1 is following a standard underdog arc, but it means that all of the time spent off of the course weighs down the momentum of the film.  Sonny is always the smartest in the room with an ace up his sleeve – err, uhh, pocket – and everyone only gives the cursory pushback to his ideas so that we as an audience can understand that he is a chaotic genius.  With the film so deeply indebted to him, everyone else falls by the wayside, filling various roles as required by the scene instead of being allowed to build an actual character.  The worst victim of this is tech lead ,Kate who not only is made out to be less qualified at her job when in the same conversations as Sonny, but also is made to turn her back on her own personal code of ethics so that Brad Pitt can land the lady before the end credits roll; a truly thankless role without even enough business to do to be in the conversation at hte end of the year as supporting acrtess.

Despite its weakness on the page when looked at any deeper than surface level, F1 still delivers on its promise.  Kosinski, like any good snack food peddler, has mastered the alchemy of empty calories that are irresistibly satisfying.  F1 does not require one to think, in fact, it actively tries to prohibit it.  The script travels across all of the familiar arcs like a car around a track, never drilling down too deep lest it ask Sonny to present as a fleshed-out character instead of just a smoldering enigma of bashfull sucsess.  In what can only be seen as Pitt trying to join the conversations about Tom Cruise as one of Hollywood’s premier action stars of a certain age, Kosinski has accidentally revealed the secret formula; vagueness.  These films operate in worlds without consequence, and these heroes are white knights riding into battle to defend the ideals of altruistic masculinity.  Even though F1 is on a decidedly more international stage than Top Gun: Maverick, both films tout the American way through their good ol’ boy leading men.  It is far less insidiously deployed here than in Maverick or even the later era Mission: Impossible films, but that rallying quality is ever present, protecting our heroes no matter how outsized the challenges may be.  If Sonny loses, then America loses, and that is unconscionable especially for a blockbuster opening so close to July 4, but even with such little narrative excitement, F1: The Movie manages to be one thrilling, hell of a ride.