F1 fails to achieve pole positon with expensive, flashy blockbuster

When Top Gun: Maverick was released in May 2022, very few people expected it to turn out the way it did.

The success of that film was a miracle; it improved on the original Top Gun in every way, brought people back to the cinema after the pandemic, and became the biggest hit of Tom Cruise’s career.

Three years later, Hollywood wants the same lightning to strike twice.

F1 is a carbon copy of Top Gun: Maverick; same director, same screenwriter, same composer, same cinematographer, same big Jerry Bruckheimer summer blockbuster gloss. 

Instead of Tom Cruise as the leading man, it’s Brad Pitt.

2022’s Bullet Train showed that audiences will still turn out for a Brad Pitt movie (but wouldn’t turn out when he was in a much better movie, Babylon), so all the pieces are in place for the biggest movie of Brad Pitt’s career.

Whether the film is a success or not, it cannot be argued that they didn’t throw everything at it.

Hiring the same director as Top Gun: Maverick means that the film, at the very least, deserves to be seen on a big screen.

F1 looks and sounds like it costs a lot of money, and it’s all on the screen.

The typical superhero movie costs as much to make as F1 – in something like Deadpool and Wolverine, you can’t tell where the money went, but you can see where the money was spent on F1.

F1 fans might remember the hoopla about the film shooting on location at Silverstone during the 2023 Grand Prix, and that doesn’t come cheap.

Yes, that’s actually Brad Pitt in a real racing car, whizzing around the track at Silverstone.

Much like the Mission: Impossible movies, where the novelty of seeing Tom Cruise risk life and limb for our entertainment, it’s clear Brad Pitt wants a slice of the pie.

There are legitimate criticisms about F1 as a hyper-commercialised sport and its role in sportswashing; with the FIA itself involved in producing the film, all of that is swept under the rug.

Before we spend the rest of the review ripping on F1 for being an overlong, cliché-ridden slog with enough product placement to make Don Draper blush, the movie is absolutely worth seeing in cinemas.

If possible, seek the film out in IMAX or the biggest screen you can find.

The special effects, editing and sound design simply won’t be the same at home; this movie was shot with cinema audiences in mind.

In an age when every other filmmaker has to comply with the Netflix or Amazon house style, it’s refreshing to see a big-budget movie like this on a screen the size of a house, and it doesn’t feel like it’s compromising.

Director Joseph Kosinski has established himself as the heir to the late, great Tony Scott (he literally directed the sequel to Top Gun) by working with Jerry Bruckheimer to make big, loud and flashy summer blockbusters with a combo of big stars and big special effects.

And Jerry Bruckheimer never met a cliché he didn’t like.

F1 has all the hits you know and love from summer blockbusters; the grizzled old veteran and the young hotshot don’t like each other at first but form a begruding respect for each other, there’s talk of trusting your gut over fancypants computers, and of course, there’s the totally needless romance sub-plot. 

F1 could have been a tight two hours and still told the same story, but no, we had to get a romance sub-plot that’s shoehorned in there as gracefully as an oil tanker attempting a three-point turn.

When F1 is actually focusing on being a movie about F1, it’s exciting and is worth the price of admission.

English actor Damson Idris stars alongside Brad Pitt as the young, brash and cocky driver who is paired with the washed-up old American driver who has a thing or two to teach him.

Idris has been on the rise for a few years now – he’s the star of the little-seen, but brilliant drama Snowfall – and his performance here sees him go line-for-line with a giant of the screen like Brad Pitt.

Banshees Of Inisherin star Kerry Condon is the third lead of the film, serving as the team’s technical director.

Condon is allowed to use her natural accent, which makes the film oddly comfortable for Irish audiences.

The producers could have made her American or British, but the decision to let Condon use her natural speaking voice is a welcome and fun addition, and has opened the door for more Culchie representation in mainstream cinema.

Condon does a good job of playing a normal person who just happens to work on incredibly expensive rocket-powered cars and deals with larger-than-life egos.

Javier Bardem is added in for colour as the team owner, an old friend of Pitt who convinces him to get back on the saddle.

Between this and his performances in the Dune movies, Bardem has become a welcome presence in big-budget Hollywood blockbusters as someone who can provide both comic relief and real dramatic gravitas.

The movie is coming out in the wake of Netflix’s Drive To Survive and a level of hype around the sport that hasn’t been seen in decades.

All of the F1 drivers from the 2023 season are present and accounted for in the movie, and Lewis Hamilton himself serves as a producer on the movie.

The big gamble with this movie is seeing if the same crowd that watches Drive To Survive on Netflix would be interested in seeing a big and glossy Hollywood version starring Brad Pitt as a fictional driver.

There is a line about a board member saying they are an expert on F1 after watching Drive To Survive, but for people who have never seen a race in their life, the film goes out of its way to explain every concept and rule about F1 about three times.

F1 fans are thrown some bones; Guenther Steiner and Toto Wolff make cameo appearances, and there are hushed, reverential references made to Ayrton Senna in Brad Pitt’s character’s backstory.

There’s enough here to please the kind of F1 fan who sets an alarm to watch the Japanese Grand Prix and enough to entice the casual fan who only discovered F1 through Netflix or Max Verstappen memes.

Comparing the movie to a real-life F1 team is simple – it’s Ferrari.

A lot of clout and prestige with some great pedigree behind it, but stuck in the shadow of newer, flashier toys.