Will the current Joseph Kosinski F1: The Movie clobber the successful Frankenheimer Grand Prix (1966), Ron Howard’s Rush (2013), or Michael Mann’s Ferrari (2024) ---I don’t think so, but it can stand with them as one heck of a fine racing movie with performances to match the quality of those other three. The director of the Cruise missile , Top Gu: Maverick, shows the great directors a thing or two about up close and personal in and out of a costly Formula 1 racing car.
When lead Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayse is behind the wheel as an aging racer coming back for one more run (yes, clichés abound as in most not quite first-rate stories), Kosinski is superior to his rivals by pasting in real footage from Formula 1 races that include people in the stands along with the super-charged tracks. Help along the way comes from numerous cameras mounted on the cars to give 360-degree coverage of Pitt and his rival Joshua Pearce (Damon Idris) inside and out and small helmet cams to completely immerse us in the experience.
Such technical bravado is what American cinema does so well—transporting us from the plush chairs to the cramped compartment of a multi-million-dollar machine and racer. Besides the visual delights that include Pitt’s well-wrought 60-year-old body, Kerry Condon brings just the right underplayed romance as the feisty chief architect of the car and Javier Bardem as Pitt’s old racing rival. It all works as summer fare that provides you with air conditioning and action in weather that is usually as blasted hot as the engines on the screen.
For a more intense collaboration with the stars, Kosinski and crew pay little attention to other rival drivers as Pitt and Pearce race around the world, leaving us with our stars and the plot centered around their team work, the inescapable ingredient of success. Better than its cinematic rivals, F1 lets us experience the rivalry and eventual brotherhood at which American filmmaking and its stories excel.
F1: The Movie
Director: Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick)
Screenplay: Kosinski, Ehren Kruger (The Ring)
Cast: Brad Pitt (Moneyball), Damson Idris (Farming)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2h 35m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com