Movies

Go behind the scenes of F1® The Movie with director Joseph Kosinski and cast members
Featurette: Warner Bros.

F1® The Movie
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Rated PG-13
Raced 27 June 2025
#F1TheMovie

F1® The Movie is a cliché-ridden jalopy. No surprise there.

Lucky No. 9

So... Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski took IMAX-approved cameras around the world and this is the story they decided to film?

It’s a thought that zips through the mind as F1® The Movie enters the final laps. It’s most definitely not what the duo wants people to think about.

But, then again, what do they want people to think about?

A question is posed to Sonny Hayes (Pitt) two or three times: "So, what’s it all about?" He just chuckles. And then he says, "It’s not about the money."

Even Sonny asks himself, "What are you doing here, Sonny?"

At one point, Sonny talks himself down a bit, demonstrating something akin to humility by admitting his life is "not much of a story."

Huh.

Got it.

Okay.

He’s a guy who spends his whole life starting over, which is a rather interesting skeleton with which to start fleshing out the lead character. He’s a "one and done" type; he wins a race and pockets the $5,000 bonus check (even though he’ll say it’s not about the money, he needs the money, considering he’s gone through bankruptcy and has a couple divorces plus an annulment in his checkered past). He passes on a watch, though, even though it’s probably worth more than that bonus check. Then he’s off to start anew somewhere else.

For Sonny, it’s all about a feeling, about being in the zone, in a special, extremely rare place where he achieves ultimate clarity. For him, that happens only when he’s behind the steering wheel.

Sonny is basically an adrenaline junky who was sidelined from racing after a disastrous in-race accident some 30 years ago, but the movie doesn’t really have enough guts to define the guy. He’s so ambiguous and non-committal, he’s not all that interesting.

In some respects, it seems as though they’re trying to create a race car version of the mysterious, quiet and decidedly older baseball sensation Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford in the sports ultra-classic, The Natural).

As portrayed by Brad Pitt, Sonny’s just like pretty much every other character Pitt has played. Pitt is Pitt is Pitt. He’s likable, certainly. But his range is limited. His mannerisms, facial expressions and speaking patterns here are virtually identical to Billy Beane, the real-life baseball visionary Pitt portrayed in the excellent Moneyball. Pitt doesn’t disappear into his characters; his characters disappear into him.

We Will Rock You

Here’s the problem: Kosinski, Pitt and legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer have big ambitions for this movie. They want to make F1 racing feel "real" to moviegoing audiences. They have the right aspirations, but they have the wrong story. And surely they, along with screenwriter Ehren Kruger, watched Ford v Ferrari and Rush as excellent examples of how to tell a story centered around racing.

There is a cool story to tell buried in the concept, the environment and the characters. But what’s told in F1® The Movie is not it. Everything could’ve been revved up with a greater focus on the dangers of racing, the technology of racing and the physical fitness of the drivers. All of those elements are in F1® The Movie, certainly, but they’re superficial and bogged down by a whole bunch of cliches.

Remove the fluff that extends this movie’s run time out to 156 minutes, focus on the differentiating factors in modern racing (particularly with F1 enjoying a major upswing in popularity) and give the drama some punch.

It's an underdog story with 61-year-old Sonny racing with and against a cocky, arrogant upstart, 34-year-old Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris, Snowfall).

Training takes the classic Rocky road. This could’ve been much more interesting — the physical requirements of racing, the dexterity and reflexes; instead, the "bad guy" works out in a flashy, luxurious training center while the "good guy" dons scrubby sweatpants and runs through the woods and tests his reflexes by bouncing tennis balls against the wall.

There’s a completely nothing romance between Sonny and Kate (Kerry Condon, Rome). Like so many other elements in F1® The Movie, this could’ve been something, it could’ve been a contender. Kate’s the sport’s first female technical director, a notion that’s also squandered. The romance itself doesn’t even last a lap. It simply doesn’t deserve to exist. It adds nothing. Especially when Sonny, in the movie’s idea of an emotional moment, declares to Ruben (Javier Bardem, Skyfall), the man with the money (never mind that it’s not about the money), "If the last thing I do is drive that car, I’ll take that life, man — a thousand times." He says that right in front of Kate.

There’s a backstabbing partner, adding a smidge of drama that goes nowhere.

Of course, there are mechanical failures, but the complexities of resolving the challenges (and, equally important, identifying what the challenges are) is glossed over. Along with that, the magic of the pit crews is given short shrift.

And, of course, there is a race in the rain.

Of course. And of course, of course, there’s a devastating accident in the rain brought on by ego and poor decision making. But even "devastating accidents" are merely narrative speed bumps for F1® The Movie. They don’t provide the emotional heft, the gravitas the production’s team is steering toward.

Aging heroes and derivative storylines seem to be writer/director Joseph Kosinski’s primary wheelhouse. In Tron: Legacy, there was the aging Flynn in a sequel that was every bit as much a remake of Star Wars as was the first Tron. Top Gun: Maverick was a great, fun and patriotic movie that benefited tremendously from Val Kilmer’s cameo, OneRepublic, Jennifer Connelly and, of course, Tom Cruise as the aging Maverick, but it was also essentially a Top Gun meets Star Wars mashup.

Now there’s Sonny.

As one teammate describes him, Sonny brings a certain "punk rock" attitude to the team. He certainly has an interesting approach to racing. He’ll risk looking the fool while bending the rules and manipulating pace requirements. Maybe all the pundits and race officials will catch on, or maybe they won’t.

Get the Led Out

Pitt and his... uh... pit crew travel the world in hopes of winning their first race and hoarding their first point, but aside from some aerial views, nothing remotely cultural is encountered. This is a movie that squanders so many opportunities and narrative possibilities that would add award-season distinction in favor of the obvious and the familiar.

"Verisimilitude" is the word of the summer. Richard Donner used it to describe the ambitions of his superb Superman: The Movie back in 1978. (We’ll see how much verisimilitude is packed into James Gunn’s Superman next month.)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has it in spades thanks to the real-life death-defying stunts performed by Tom Cruise himself. How to Train Your Dragon lacks it with its sets and props that look like they dropped out of a 3-D printer. Snow White might as well have been filmed at Disneyland.

And F1® The Movie has some of it. The production boasts of filming during F1 races (or, at least, during one), which is great. Their hearts and minds are in the right place.

If done right, F1® The Movie could generate a further spike in interest in F1 and the sport of high-performance racing overall. But there are two glaring omissions. It’s not until the final laps of the movie when the first-person perspective is used successfully — on the track in Abu Dhabi — and it does make quite an impact. Otherwise, aerial shots are nice, but not nearly as immersive.

Also, from track to track, there are going to be unique challenges. None of that’s addressed.

It’s all superficial. And it’s focused on the wrong things. One microcosmic example is a simple continuity issue — or vanity issue. Sonny has virtually no gray hair in Vegas, toward the end of the movie. At the beginning, while setting the stage, it’s clear he has his share and he’s a bit beaten down.

Overall, it’s a good IMAX experience with terrific sound (including a soundtrack featuring some classic rock), but it’s not quite the full IMAX experience.

F1® The Movie ends with something of a tease, teeing up the remote possibility of a sequel, as Sonny shows up in Baja offering his services for dune racing. The guys he’s talking to don’t know him from Adam. They tell him they can’t pay him much.

He says, of course,"It’s not about the money."

As Sonny rips through the dunes, the action and visual possibilities look much more interesting than the F1 races.

Maybe there’s something there.

But, for that to happen, F1® The Movie is going to have to show Warner Bros. the money.

Lots of it.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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