F1 is as entertaining as it is ridiculous. A Formula 1 driver getting away with the sort of track chicanery that Brad Pitt’s character pulls off here? Nonsense. Insane. He’d be yanked off the track so fast he wouldn’t have time to remove his fireproof balaclava.
While we’re about it, Isn’t Pitt way too old for the role? Aged about 60 when this was made, Pitt is playing about 50? Maybe. He’s in good shape and takes his shirt off a couple of times to reveal what he got paid a reported $30 million to deliver – Brad Pitt gorgeousness, with a shrug and a slightly diffident, “Can I help it if I’m hot?” smirk. But what Pitt’s ageing driver gets up to on the track – no, absolutely not. Even Max Verstappen at his most controversial was not accused of the sort of “gamesmanship” (let’s not call it cheating) Pitt’s Sonny Hayes gets away with here, blocking cars, running people off the track, and so on.
Lewis Hamilton is one of the producers, and he was nudging 40 when this was made, so maybe with a squint of the eyes and a graciousness towards the ageing movie star we can let all that stuff go.
There is a “can we let this go?” aspect to the whole thing. It’s an unashamed recycling of the sports underdog plot. In fact underdog underdog – the ageing racing ace, the “greatest who never was” yanked out of obscurity and back into an F1 team struggling to gain even a single point in the punishing F1 championship. The ancientest driver in the worstest team brought in to save the day, in the process putting out of joint the nose of the team’s previous hotshot driver. We all know which direction this is going.
Why it works is because no one pretends it is anything it isn’t. It rockets along, lapping one cliché after another. And the racing sequences are good, as you might hope with Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski directing. Lewis Hamilton, leaving a preview screening, approvingly told Kosinski the cars looked “fast”. They do. Shit-your-pants fast.
There is acting talent too – Javier Bardem as the team boss, Kerry Condon as the team’s technical director, Damson Idris as the pushy number two driver, 30 years younger and chippier. An amazing amount of talent goes to waste – Shea Whigham and Kim Bodnia are just two fine actors among many left inhaling fumes. Even Bardem doesn’t get that much of a look-in and he’s meant to be a key part of the story, what there is of it.
The decision to film good chunks of it at actual Grand Prix events pays off, adding back in levels of plausibility the plot is shovelling out the rear entrance just as fast. Seasoned commentator Martin Brundle’s voice adds another edge of authenticity, as do little cutaways – there’s Jackie Stewart, Christian Horner, Yuki Tsunoda and Mr Hamilton himself. Don’t worry, none of them does any acting.
As anyone who watches grand prix racing knows, once a team has a remarkable driver in a fast car, it’s all about tyres – soft ones, hard ones, ones for the wet and the dry – and so much hangs on how often the car pulls into the pits, when it pulls in, and how quickly the mechanics can work their magic and get it out again.
For all its entirely familiar broad arc, it is attention to the strategy and tactics of F1 racing that makes F1 interesting. It’s a sleek and canny screenplay by Ehren Kruger, who is keen to show that driving at this level is a team effort, not just a gladiatorial joust. Kruger even works in a subplot about boardroom-level chicanery and some tentative romance without slowing things down too much.
Sonny’s last hurrah, you could call it. Pitt’s too. There is a sense of this being the last time we’ll be seeing Pitt in this sort of role – all swagger, West Coast tan and aviator shades. The music is often old school – Led Zep and Queen – and Pitt is photographed gorgeously by Claudio Miranda, who’s been making him look good since Seven, 30 years ago. For all the whine of the cars, the roar of the crowds and the smell of noxious fumes in the morning, an elegiac tone hangs over F1. It’s one of the reasons it works so well.
F1 – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
