Brad Pitt puts pedal to the metal in ‘F1 the Movie’
Take the director of Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski) and pair him with a different Hollywood icon (Brad Pitt this time, instead of Tom Cruise) in a story about an aging hotshot trying to get back in the game while mentoring a callow young ‘un. Sounds like a simple pitstop change, right?
Well, hold your horsepower. F1 the Movie (yes, the title is the brand is the title, etc.) does do essentially what Maverick did, except this time capturing some teeth-grinding action on the racetrack instead of up in the clouds. But the story is a bit more complicated than that. And somehow, also quite simplistic.
Relying on the icon power of Pitt is not a bad bet, and having him square off against Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), an up-and-coming racer for Javier Bardem’s flailing F1 team APXGP with a bit too much swagger and bling, is a good start. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a guy who was set to win the F1 along with teammate Bardem in his youth, but… yada, yada, yada, 30 years later, he’s a racer-for-hire hopping into souped-up roadsters at Daytona for a quick buck (the opening sequence, set to the timeless throttle of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, sets the high-octane tone right upfront). Bardem hires him to help drive for his bottom-level team, hoping it will spark success. But Pitt is no spring chicken and the notion of him quickly catching up on 30 years of driving technology in a few weeks does raise some eyebrows among F1 fans here. (Idris and Pitt, not to be outdone by Cruise, did some of their own stunt work, driving modified Formula 1 cars.)
The story, as formulaic as it is, reels you in. This is no Karate Kid tale of Zen mentoring: Sonny and Joshua get along like motor oil and water, so their confrontations push us through botched races and near-death crashes as they find the right mix to pull together as a team. The action scenes are gripping, tight-turning, unrelenting, even as you try to ignore all the product placement flying by: Rolex, IWC Schaffhausen, Apple (which produced the film, incidentally), Heineken, Mercedes-Benz, Tommy Hilfiger (which sold merch outside the SM Aura IMAX and emblazoned the special premiere drink cups).
Sonny has a love interest in Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), the team’s technical director, and their scenes together do their job, peeling back the layers of Hayes’ hurt, how he ended up with a yard-long scar down his back and now sits in empty rooms, desultorily tossing playing cards into a hat between races. None of this symbolism is particularly as important as Pitt’s laidback charm, his willingness to lean into his age, even while showing the whippersnappers how it’s done.
What’s the typical retirement age for F1 drivers? A certain AI algorithm tells me it’s between 37 and 42, though Sonny is way beyond that birthday, and many drivers retire in their 20s. As the movie shows, keeping up with new technology (such as the souped-up F1 steering wheel) requires constant reflex training as one ages. Pitt, who, like Cruise, is in his early 60s, does show that age on the screen. But gracefully. And you could say that movies like MI: Final Reckoning and F1 the Movie embrace a new genre, one pioneered by Danny Glover’s line from the old Lethal Weapon movies: call it the “I’m gettin’ too old for this sh*t” school of action thrillers. So who says seniors can’t do impossible stunts? Or do 51 laps at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix without becoming a flaming wreck?
There’s a lot in F1 about teamwork and overcoming “dirty air” through better design, and how the drivers get constant frantic updates while approaching every corner and how pitstops can be done in 2.9 seconds (an occurrence onscreen that caused people to applaud in the IMAX seats next to me).
Personally, this viewer doesn’t see the appeal of driving. Getting behind a wheel here in Manila is an unfortunate necessity at times, and I find no great escape in watching people onscreen racing at adrenaline-spurting levels. (In fact, it affects my driving habits after I leave the cinema, causing me to overtake unnecessarily.) But F1 the Movie, for all the creaky, familiar parts, does possess a glossy exterior, and enough star power under the hood to make you feel comfortable enough for a ride-along, even with its 2:36 length.
