Brad Pitt's F1: The Movie is undeniably thrilling and infuriatingly unrealistic

Australia Broadcast Center

6 hours ago

F1: The Movie was always going to struggle to set itself apart from the runaway hit Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive.
What: A middle-aged driver's improbable comeback to the elite world of F1 racing.
Starring: Brad Pitt and Damson Idris
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
When: In cinemas now
Likely to make you feel: Pumped with adrenaline, but disappointed
The multi-season reality TV show has been following F1 drivers, team managers and owners on and off the race track for seven seasons, elevating drivers to global stardom and introducing the sport to new, diverse audiences. And the viewers have been lapping it up.
This perhaps explains the film's ludicrous plot.
F1 stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a middle-aged, washed up driver who retired from the limelight after a near-fatal crash at the Spanish Grand Prix 30 years ago. He now spends his days filling in at a hodgepodge of motorsport competitions — from the 24 Hours of Daytona race in the US to the Baja 100 in Mexico.
Some call him a has-been. Others think he's a never-was.
Enter Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of the fictional Expensify APX GP F1 team and Sonny's former teammate. APX GP hasn't scored a single point for the past two-and-a-half seasons and they're in desperate need of a lead driver to mentor their second: impatient rookie Joshua Pearce (played by a delightfully cheeky Damson Idris).
Mid-season and with few other options, Ruben begs Sonny to take the role.
Queue an intense rivalry between Joshua and Sonny, who clash over their age gap, racing strategies, attitudes and everything in between.
Joshua is young, Black, British and so desperate for a long-term career in a sport that's historically been the playground of the white and elite that he's happy to function as a walking advertisement and do everything by the book. Despite the overconfidence he projects, he still has a lot to learn.
Sonny is an achingly American older hunk of a white man who swans around in rose-tinted glasses with little awareness of his privilege and too much charm for his own good. He refuses to play the PR game or follow any rules, and his idea of race preparation involves donning a lucky pair of odd socks.
And yet, with Sonny on board and just a few tweaks to their cars, APX GP somehow manages to turn themselves into real contenders in a handful of races. To say this is implausible is putting it lightly.
But especially considering that a big part of APX GP's new-found success comes down to Sonny's "race strategies", which would better be described as dangerous race manipulation that in real life would more likely result in life-threatening injuries and penalties than podiums.
It's surprising a movie produced by none other than seven-time F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton takes so many liberties in depicting the sport.
The narrative opportunities the F1 movie fumbles are similarly disappointing.
You'd expect Sonny to have some kind of trauma to work through from his near-death experience driving an F1 car 30 years ago, but no. He's apparently fine to resume racing as if nothing ever happened.
When Joshua faces a similarly horrifying crash, he too carries on racing with little fanfare.
And while the F1 movie features an impressively diverse cast, it frequently does its marginalised characters a disservice.
There's the time the only woman on the APX GP pit crew makes a crucial error at a pit stop. There's Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), who may be the first woman to serve as APX GP's technical director, but the bulk of her storyline involves her breaking her "no sleeping with co-workers" rule for a certain driver. And when Joshua, a second-generation immigrant, points out he's had to work twice as hard to get where he is, Sonny quips that he only deserves a meaningless participation trophy.
But what the F1 movie lacks in a plausible narrative and depth, it makes up for in its sleek original score from the inimitable Hans Zimmer, and undeniably thrilling driving sequences.
Director Joseph Kosinski, the man behind Top Gun: Maverick, is unsurprisingly adept at making viewers feel as if they are the ones in the cockpit, and this film has the bonus of being filmed on real circuits during race weekends — from Silverstone in the UK to Monza in Italy.
The F1 movie is at its best when realistically blurring fiction with reality.
There are countless cameos throughout this film, from Red Bull's reigning world champion driver, Max Verstappen, to Mercedes chief executive Toto Wolff and prominent F1 commentator and journalist Will Buxton.
A biopic looking at Hamilton's journey to F1 and subsequent super stardom would have likely meant more to the fans and had something of note to say — beyond ageism being 'bad' and feeling the fear and doing things anyway being 'good'.
But as a fictionalised version of Drive to Survive that requires total suspension of disbelief, F1 is serviceable. Particularly for F1 fans who are into cameos, newcomers who don't care about plausibility … and people who simply want to ogle 61-year-old Pitt shirtless, physical abuse allegations and all.
F1 is in cinemas now.