F1 Review
Last night I was able to see one of my most anticipated movies of the year, F1. This is one that I’ve been very excited about due to the cast, the creative team, and the trailers. How was this movie? Did it live up to the hype? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
The best thing about this movie is exactly what I’d hoped I loved about it. This feels like a classic blockbuster that we don’t get very often. It’s a film that is entertaining, funny, thrilling, emotional, all packaged in one film that doesn’t require a lot of CGI or big spectacle. It’s a film that I think anybody can watch and enjoy. I enjoy big blockbusters and comic book movies. But it feels like blockbusters are dominated by these big franchise films. There’s not a lot of blockbusters that we get these days that aren’t franchise films. This isn’t an original idea, it’s borrowing from Formula 1. It follows the sports movie template very well. So it’s not completely original like Sinners was earlier this year. But it has this original feel to it because it’s not a franchise film blockbuster. Like I said earlier, it’s a film that has a little bit of everything in there. You get the entertainment value that you want from a summer blockbuster. You get the excitement you want. You get movie stars being charismatic and knowing how to lead a film. Similar to Top Gun: Maverick this is a film that anybody can watch and enjoy. If you loved Top Gun: Maverick, you’re probably going to love this film.
The other part you have to talk about with this film are the racing sequences. I haven’t seen a lot of racing films, Ford v Ferrari is the only other notable one in my mind. This movie has some of the best car sequences in film history, regardless of it being a sports movie or not. In the way that Joseph Kosinski put the audience in the cock pits in Top Gun: Maverick, he does that with formula one cars in this film. Whenever there’s a racing sequence in this film with the ways the camera is positioned you feel like you’re in the sequence with them. In some ways I think this film does a better job than Top Gun: Maverick. Part of it is because I’m used to being in cars more than planes so watching a movie where cars are going 180 mph, there’s something exhilarating about that. I watched some interviews with the director, Joseph Kosinski and he talked about how they had over 5,000 hours of racing footage for this film. The editor had to go through and pick the best shots that best captured the thrills and excitement of the sequences. When you watch the sequences they all work because of Kosinski’s director, the camera placement, and the editing. I’m curious to see how well this movie does during award season. This film is almost guaranteed to be nominated in the technical categories.
Another thing that I really liked about the film and that really surprised me was the film’s way of exploring greatness and wanting greatness. At the core is the dynamic between Brad Pitt and Damson Idris. Pitt is playing the older racer that never got his shot and is in formula 1 to redeem himself. Idris is the young cocky guy that wants greatness and to do well in this sport. Both of them want greatness and want to win but for very different reasons. There’s something so compelling about watching these characters both trying to achieve the same thing but at very different stages in life. It’s not just through the racing that we see this idea, we see this idea explored through all of these characters. Kerry Condon is playing this love interest who’s a part of the main mechanical team. It was very easy for her to come across this one note stock romantic interest for Pitt. They give her layers because she’s trying to achieve something just as much as Pitt is. Javier Bardem is the business man that recruits Pitt back into the game. On a financial and business level there’s reasons why Bardem wants to succeed. I thought it was really interesting and it gave more layers and depth to the film and to the characters. I saw some early reactions to the film saying that the side characters weren’t interesting and dragged the film down. I don’t agree with that at all, the side characters were super interesting and compelling.
The other part of the characters that work is of course the cast. Brad Pitt is in the lead here and he’s just as good as ever. This is one of the most charismatic performances of Pitt’s career. He’s built his career around being the cool guy, he’s been the cool guy for the past 30 years. He’s once again being the cool guy in this film. He’s able to be funny and charming. He also has to lean into being the mentor figure. He’s giving advice and teaching Damson Idris’ character. He’s doing it in a very different way, I don’t wanna give away too much. He’s complicated at points but he’s smart in the decisions he’s making when he’s being complicated. He’s partnered really well off of Damson Idris’ character. I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything before, but he’s really good and I hope he has a great career ahead of him. When a younger star is able to hold his own against the established movie star you know you have somebody super talented. Their characters are very different, they have different personalities but they learn to appreciate each other by the end of it. There’s humor and emotion that come from their dynamics. Even the ways that they view the press and press conferences are very different. But you also have great actors with Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem in here that we expect great performances out of them. Both of them share a lot of scenes with Pitt and there’s great chemistry and dynamics there. Going back to Pitt so much of what makes his performance great is that he’s having to be different people depending on the relationship. He’s the mentor with Idris, the love interest with Condon, and the old friend with Bardem. There’s sort of three (sometimes four) different relationships and dynamics that he has to have in this film and he’s able to portray all of them so well.
Another aspect that I’ve seen talked about a lot in reviews is the score. You don’t normally talk about sports films and their scores. Rocky is probably the only legendary sports movie score. But this film is composed by Hans Zimmer, one of the best film composers of the last 30 years. When I found out he was scoring the film I was very excited and knew that he was going to deliver something great. It’s starting pretty early on in the film and it constantly plays throughout it. It gets you pumped up and matches the energy nicely. This is up there with Sinners as one of the best scores of the year.
Finally, this film does follow the sports movie template. If you’ve seen any sports movie then you’ve seen the basic outline for this film. I don’t really like that. It's fair to say that it’s a negative about this film because otherwise you’d be criticizing the entire genre. It does follow the template, it’s predictable. But it does the formula right. When the emotional beats hit they work. When the film is supposed to make you feel victorious it works. The film was never trying to reinvent the sports movie genre, it was just trying to be a great summer blockbuster and I think it does that really well.
The Bad
There’s really only one negative I’d say about the film. That’s to say the film is 2 hours and 35 minutes long. Did the film need to be that long? Probably not. I don’t know what I would say you needed to and should be cut out. It just feels like there’s a version of this film that maybe could’ve been trimmed by just a couple of minutes in the second act. Honestly, that’s really my only negative about this film, I loved it.
Final Thoughts: F1 is just as good as I hoped it would be. As of right now, this has beat Sinners to become my favorite movie of the year. I loved it and this is going to be most people’s favorite film of the summer. Joseph Kosinski might be doing a very similar formula to Top Gun: Maverick but delivers another awesome blockbuster. Go see this movie on the big screen, if you wait at home you won’t get the same experience.
The Score: 9.3/10 (A)
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