F1
The summer’s first blockbuster screeches into cinemas next week, and it’s a car crash of a movie. But in a good way, mostly.
The star of F1 is Brad Pitt, and Joseph Kosinski, who cemented his reputation as a fine action-film director with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, is at the wheel.
Yet there’s an even more eye-catching name in the opening titles.
The film was made in collaboration with Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, and one of the producers is seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton, who by all accounts kept a keen eye on the credibility of the racing scenes.
They are duly thrilling, even if the engine driving the plot forward would barely power Noddy’s car, let alone Hamilton’s.
It’s a hackneyed, cut-and-paste narrative that we’ve seen a thousand times before; in other sports films, in thrillers, in Westerns, you name it.
The summer’s first blockbuster screeches into cinemas next week, and it’s a car crash of a movie. But in a good way, mostly
The star of F1 is Brad Pitt (right), and Joseph Kosinski, who cemented his reputation as a fine action-film director with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, is at the wheel. Pictured left, Javier Bardem
The film was made in collaboration with Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, and one of the producers is seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton, who by all accounts kept a keen eye on the credibility of the racing scenes
A grizzled has-been makes an unlikely but ultimately triumphant comeback, sharing his know-how with a cocky young gun.
We all know the story. But in F1 it’s told with such high-octane energy that it barely matters.
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It also helps that the has-been in question, former Formula One driver Sonny Hayes, is played by Pitt, whose alpha-male sexiness even now that he’s reached his sixties, Kosinski honours to the point of parody.
There are a couple of shots of a laid-back, denim-shirted Sonny coolly sauntering out of the haze like the Marlboro Man, or indeed like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
And then there are the shots of him not in a denim shirt, or any shirt at all. I think it’s known as objectification.
Anyway, Sonny raced against the likes of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost until a terrible crash at the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix ended his Formula One career.
Since then he’s been driving in less glamorous forms of motor sport, but his old buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem), now the owner of the ailing, debt-laden Apex team, wants him to make a comeback.
Ruben hopes that Sonny’s nous will rub off on his rookie English driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) but predictably the younger guy is none too keen to be mentored.
They are duly thrilling, even if the engine driving the plot forward would barely power Noddy’s car, let alone Hamilton’s
It’s a hackneyed, cut-and-paste narrative that we’ve seen a thousand times before; in other sports films, in thrillers, in Westerns, you name it
Just as predictably, so this hardly counts as a spoiler, the friction between the two drivers eventually gives way to mutual respect.
That’s the essence of the tale, but there are several sub-plots of varying interest. Sonny takes an immediate fancy to the team’s comely Irish technical director, Kate (Kerry Condon), but will she submit to his advances? Take a wild guess.
There’s also a somewhat half-hearted attempt to pep things up with a spot of boardroom chicanery, masterminded by a sly Apex director played by Tobias Menzies.
Maybe these sub-plots are a form of insurance, in case not everyone in the audience understands the actual racing action.
By way of further insurance, Ehren Kruger’s script treats us to some decidedly dubious track commentary, in which the leading cars, the Red Bulls and Ferraris and McLarens, are barely mentioned.
The commentator really only has eyes for Hayes and Pearce and their shenanigans at the back.
But like the ropey plot, the clunky exposition hardly matters. I’ve seen better motor-racing movies but none which convey so viscerally the adrenaline rush of driving at speeds of well over 200mph.
You might never have cared whether Formula One drivers choose slick or wet tyres, or known that there’s a difference between soft, medium and hard tyres, but by the end of this film you really might.
I’ve seen better motor-racing movies but none which convey so viscerally the adrenaline rush of driving at speeds of well over 200mph
You might never have cared whether Formula One drivers choose slick or wet tyres, or known that there’s a difference between soft, medium and hard tyres, but by the end of this film you really might
To reach that cinematic chequered flag, by the way, you’ll need staying power. At over two and a half hours, F1 lasts a good deal longer than the average Grand Prix, well and truly putting the ‘exhaust’ in exhausting.
I expect petrolheads will love it regardless, given that for every moment that in real life would never happen, there’s a proper blast of authenticity, with fleeting cameos for Hamilton himself and Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, and a more extended role for driver-turned-commentator Martin Brundle.
As for non-purists, they might love it even more. Formula One isn’t always the spectacle that it is here, but then this is popcorn entertainment at its corniest. It’s proper, old-fashioned, escapist fun.
F1 opens in cinemas next Wednesday, and will stream on Apple TV+ later this year.