I understand that the sport Formula 1 has a fan base. It took over my friends during the pandemic and never let go. But I didn’t know how exciting I would find F1: The Movie. That one was a shock to me.
The Joseph Kosinski movie asks an important question: What if we added emotional stakes to Formula 1? To be fair, F1 feels very emotionally heightened from what I’ve seen but F1: The Movie really does feel like they took Top Gun: Maverick and put it on the race track in Las Vegas. It’s kind of amazing to watch.
The summer blockbuster introduces us to Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a former F1 driver who has been doing NASCAR and smaller circuits to try to still stay on the track. But when his old friend Rueben (Javier Bardem) comes to ask for a favor, Sonny ends up driving for Rueben’s F1 team. He’s racing alongside a young driver named Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and the two but heads but have to learn to work together for the betterment of the team.
Again, this feels a lot like what Kosinski has done with both Maverick and even with the emotional stakes of Tron: Legacy, but it works for his movies. Sonny shouldn’t be driving an F1 car and yet every time he is on the track, you can’t look away. It’s captivating and that’s part of the joy of F1: The Movie.
It’s more than just fast cars
It’d be easy to make a movie like F1: The Movie work as just a bunch of cars going fast. I’d see it, probably go again in 4DX, and have a great time. But what Kosinski and co-writer Ehren Kruger did with this movie was make us car about drivers just as the real F1 does.
Did I care that, at times, I could tell where the story was going? No because I wanted to see these characters succeed or I knew they needed to fail in order to learn. It was beautiful watching as Sonny and Joshua grew together and learned what it meant to be a team because F1 really is a team sport, despite what people may think.
You cannot get to the end of the track without your team there to back you up and even the best in F1 know this. Yes, the movie was fun because we got to see real drivers in the back. I loved every time Lewis Hamilton was posing and seeing my favorite, Max Verstappen, just standing there had me laughing. But what F1: The Movie comes down to is its characters.
Watching an action movie is only as good as the characters we meet along the way and F1 recognizes this and uses it to the film’s advantage. I was constantly worried about Sonny and Joshua and when the Kosinski lets us live in the silence of Sonny’s car, it is one of the most breathtaking moments in recent history.
It’s fun, thrilling, and a perfect summer blockbuster.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
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