High-octane F1: The Movie earns spot on podium for Free Press writers

Winnipeg Free Press

6 hours ago

At the start of every Formula One race, the cars line up in the order in which they qualified before five red lights illuminate and then go dark. Sky Sports commentator David (Crofty) Croft exclaims, 'It's lights out, and away we go!' as 20 drivers from 10 teams hit the gas in their single-seater, sponsor-adorned racecars.
F1: The Movie
• Starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem
• Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital
• 155 minutes, PG
F1: The Movie tells the story of a fictional 11th team, the struggling APXGP Formula 1 outfit.
The film stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, an almost-was American driver who had a major crash in the mid-1990s and disappeared from mainstream racing. He's brought back by a former teammate turned team boss, played by Javier Bardem, to mentor a young driver named Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).
The on-track battles — filmed at actual racetracks alongside real F1 cars — are but part of the story, the rest involving shady business dealings, a burgeoning relationship between Hayes and APXGP technical director Kate McKenna (played by Better Call Saul's Kerry Condon), and the struggle to keep the team from folding.
Directed by Joseph Kasinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer — the duo that brought Top Gun: Maverick to the masses — the film was granted unprecedented access to the racetracks to get footage, with Idris and Pitt venturing onto the tracks in real (albeit slightly slower) racecars.
So, is F1: The Movie a podium contender, taking an even higher spot than Netflix's popular Drive to Survive series? Or does it sputter to a halt?
Free Press writers and F1 superfans Scott Billeck, Julia-Simone Rutgers and Ben Sigurdson buckled up to see what the film has under the hood. The following post-screening chat has been edited for length and clarity.
Ben: I thought the the racing aspects of the film were phenomenal. I know they used some CGI in there to swap in their car's colours onto another car from real race footage, but it was seamless.
The realism of the races was quite stunning. You've got Brad Pitt and Damson Idris lined up before the race for the anthems with the other drivers, and later in the film you've got one of the APXGP drivers on the podium with real F1 drivers, little cameos and stuff like that — the fans will obviously eat that up.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Damson Idris (left) and Brad Pitt take the checkered flag in F1: The Movie
Warner Bros. Pictures
Damson Idris (left) and Brad Pitt take the checkered flag in F1: The Movie
Julia-Simone (J-S): In the beginning of the movie, we're not in the F1 world yet.
And they're building this story, doing their world building around Brad Pitt's character and then you get that moment at (U.K. F1 track) Silverstone … even though I've been hearing about this movie for two years, the lights go out at Silverstone, and I get that excitement. It really pulled me in in that moment. The cinematography, that is the selling point. It is phenomenal.
Ben: It's Top Gun: Maverick taken to another level — they were able to do even more here because the cameras are so much smaller and they could control them remotely, spin them around. You could see these incredible wheel-to-wheel battles.
Scott: That's got to be the most realistic racing we've ever seen, other than parts of the plot in the races. But that's fine because when I watch a racing movie, somebody's got to win.
It's always probably going to be the main character, right? Yeah, of course there's drama in the last race — you need a plot — but the rest of it's awesome, and I think the plot will be fine for people that don't care about F1.
J-S: The sound design was great, especially in the beginning, where you felt the room shake as they're driving.
Ben: We saw it in Screen X, a quasi-270-degree viewing experience. It was fine but a bit weird.
The posters say 'Filmed for IMAX,' and I definitely think seeing it on the biggest possible screen is the way to go. (F1: The Movie wasn't offered in IMAX the night we attended.) I watch every race on my big-ish TV, and you get the on-board cameras, the different perspectives, drone cameras and helicopter shots, but this was next level.
Ben: Brad Pitt is what, 60? 61? They never actually say his character's age — just that he's done 30 years of racing.
J-S: He's racing with (Ayrton) Senna (who died in 1994) — you do the math.
Ben: It's a stretch to think someone's body could hold up for that long. Anyway, in the part he's sort of just so… Brad Pitt-y. It's like watching Tom Cruise in anything — you can't ever get totally lost in the character because they're such huge recognizable stars. But it's also part of the draw of the movie.
Scott: I thought it would be worse than it was, but he took the role seriously, you can tell. And during filming over the last couple years, he seemed to be pretty immersed in it.
J-S: Damson Idris was phenomenal. I think they wrote him such a good story, and then they didn't quite deliver on it. But I think he played that young, cocky rookie incredibly well. I also loved Kim Bodnia (Killing Eve), who plays the team principal. He was very believable — perfectly cast for that role.
Scott: That's what I thought Javier Bardem's character would be like until he opened his mouth.
Ben: His character was the least interesting or developed. I love Bardem, but this wasn't his best role.
J-S: Kerry Condon was great as Kate McKenna. I found her very likable. I didn't love the playing up of her being the first female technical director in F1. And Sarah Niles, who plays Joshua Pearce's mom — she's one of my favourites.
Scott: She was so good in Ted Lasso as the therapist.
Warner Bros Pictures
The consensus is that Kerry Condon (left) and Kim Bodnia are well-cast in F1: The Movie.
Warner Bros Pictures
The consensus is that Kerry Condon (left) and Kim Bodnia are well-cast in F1: The Movie.
Ben: So the handsome, older driver comes in and gets frisky with the technical director (Condon). I mean I guess you've got to have a plot…
Scott: But they didn't overdo it. It wasn't some extended sex scene — it was pretty quick, pretty tame.
Ben: The relationship didn't impact the storyline much, other than some initial tension. It's not like she was ever sitting on the pit wall screaming, 'Sonny, be careful, sweetie!'
J-S: I was a little concerned about the romance plotline going in, and it was absolutely fine. I thought it was honestly kind of believable, like it could happen. In terms of the team's on-track strategy, the teamwork thing, I respect that they needed to have a message for the kids, but as a fan, teamwork like that isn't quite the modus operandi of racing.
Ben: They say your biggest rival is your teammate, so to do something for 'the good of the team' doesn't always happen. There's a point where Sonny comes in for a pit stop and they don't give him the tires that he wants, so he just sits there.
Scott: That bothered me a lot. That would never happen.
Ben: I guess for drama's sake, it helped move the plot along. I mean, if (four-time world champion) Max Verstappen came in and pulled that, it's one thing, butt Sonny is a guy who's barely raced in Formula One, is barely back in.
Ben: I do feel like they were trying to shoehorn a lot of things into 2 1/2 hours. If you go longer, people start looking at watches.
Scott: I never felt the movie was too long. It's like Drive to Survive — they focused on the big parts, the big fiery crashes.
J-S: That's a racing-movie convention too: here's the important race that we're gonna spend 20 minutes in, and then here's a series of races that happened to build up.
Ben: Maybe (the filmmakers) were also working within the parameters of what they were able to do. They would only go out at an actual race filming in the formation laps for like 10 minutes before lights out. It's like, 'We've gotta get the footage and get out of here because the race is going to happen and we're not real.'
Of course, we're three nerds who would come and watch two hours of just straight racing on the big screen.
Ben: F1: The Movie will appeal to the summer blockbuster crowd — it's Top Gun: Maverick on wheels. You don't need to be a fighter pilot or racecar driver to enjoy it. I would have preferred less explanation — like at the races, there was so much explaining of everything, mainly via the commentators: you hear Crofty and Martin Brundle, and they say, 'Oh, this is when they have to do this, which means this will happen.' I felt they were beating you over the head with how things work.
Scott: I think it's good that you have that connection. You go and listen to a race, as people might do, you'll also hear Crofty and Brundle talking. I thought that made it way more realistic, but it did sound a lot like the video game, just the little one-liners they would say.
J-S: Explaining those fundamentals is important for the the non-fan viewer, and I think it's something that the first season of Drive to Survive did really well — where they had (commentator) Will Buxton in there in his very dramatic way.
Scott: It speaks a bit to the technical nature of the sport, though. There was a bit where the APXGP team was reported for a piece on the car that they put on, and that they had to take off. That added some unnecessary drama, but also showed some of the pettiness in the sport. When you start improving, somebody's going to complain about it, right?
J-S: What I love about racing movies is like, we watch racing a because we're tech nerds — at least that's part of why I watch it — but also it's for the the grit and the guts and the the passion that a racer embodies.
There are a lot of moments in this movie when I felt that didn't quite land.
And I've been wondering: is this the perfect encapsulation of F1 today? Is this the F1 movie for a new audience? You've got this backdrop of the glitz and the money, that's the context that today's fan has going into F1, and I think there were a lot of moments that highlighted the parts of racing that irk me.
Scott: I watched F1 in the 90s on Wide World of Sports. It would just come on. I don't know if there was even a pre-show. You'd watch the race; they would cut it off the race if it went too long. It was so primitive back then. It's so global now.
Ben: So out of five checkered flags, how many for F1: The Movie?
Scott: 🏁🏁🏁🏁1/2. There was so much realism to it, and I'm just a big documentary guy. At first I laughed at it all — Brad Pitt, this is going to be the dumbest thing, but I'd go see it again happily in IMAX with a bigger screen and better sound.
Warner Bros Pictures
Brad Pitt is recruited to help a struggling F1 team because he is Brad Pitt.
Warner Bros Pictures
Brad Pitt is recruited to help a struggling F1 team because he is Brad Pitt.
J-S: I'd say a solid 🏁🏁🏁🏁 out of five. It's great — and I love a documentary, too — but part of what draws me into sports, broadly speaking, are the very human dramas at the heart of it. They could have done so much more with it. You could have done a whole story just about Joshua Pearce. But the cinematography aspects, hands down, one of the coolest things you can watch, absolutely see it on the biggest screen possible, the loudest theatre.
Ben: I'd also give it 🏁🏁🏁🏁. There are corny parts, but it's a summer blockbuster. There are the Jurassic Parks and the How to Train Your Dragons of the world, and this — we're not in The English Patient territory here. It's a spectacle.
Scott: The fact that Brad Pitt is the leading role in this movie is staggering to me.
Before Drive to Survive, not that many celebs really cared about F1. You'd see your Gordon Ramsays and your soccer players, but to get Brad Pitt to star in an F1 movie would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. I loved Drive to Survive. I didn't think people would get so behind it. It's been the biggest thing that ever happened to F1.
Ben: Until this.
Scott: That's how cool the movie is. You have Brad Pitt, who might be the most recognizable actor in the world…
J-S: … standing on the grid with the full complement of F1 drivers. It's that merging of Hollywood and sport.
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It's a plot as old as the horseless carriage, but in F1, it's fuel-injected by an exceptionally appealing cast.
— Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
A seductive fantasy built around cool cars and an even cooler Brad Pitt.
— Rafer Guzman, Newsday
Brad Pitt, at 61, has finally aged into roles like these. And sometimes, as F1 proves, they're the best thing that can happen to a guy.
— Stephanie Zacharek, Time Magazine
Following a dramatic and expertly executed crash sequence, the movie loses its grip. It veers off course into a montage that speeds past where most of the character development might've taken place.
— Maxwell Rabb, Chicago Reader
Scott BilleckReporter
Several wise folks — ok, ok, journalism types — once told Scott he better make sure he can report on news before he learns to write about sports. In what can only be described as a minor miracle, he listened.
Read full biography
Julia-Simone RutgersReporter
Julia-Simone Rutgers is a climate reporter with a focus on environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a three-year partnership between the Winnipeg Free Press and The Narwhal, funded by the Winnipeg Foundation.
Read full biography
Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson edits the Free Press books section, and also writes about wine, beer and spirits.
Read full biography
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