Joseph Kosinski has returned to the driver's seat after the roaring success of his previous film Top Gun: Maverick, a legacy sequel where Tom Cruise's Maverick returns to the US Air Force to train a group of new recruits who have been assigned an impossible mission. In F1 The Movie, Tom Cruise is replaced with Brad Pitt (as Sonny Hayes, a has-been ex-racing legend), the Air Force is replaced with Formula 1 racing and the group of new recruits with the singular racing team member Damson Idris (as the cocky up and comer, Joshua Pearce) - but the story remains very much the same, just instead of an enemy base being raided, several Grand Prixs need to be won for Javier Bardem's Reuben Cervantes to keep his APX GP Team, from a board of directors losing faith in his ownership.
Plot isn't the only similarity F1 The Movie shares with its more military predecessor. Like Top Gun: Maverick, it's very much designed to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Fittingly, the film's dedication to depicting not just the races themselves but all the behind the scenes technical side of the titular fast paced sport is impeccable. The audience is placed in the front seat of every facet of the sport's structure. Throughout the several races that take place in the film's two and a half hour runtime, there's a visceral perspective from the driver's seat, the pits and the spectators of the races. The film is about as close as you can get to taking part in a Formula 1 race as you can get. Each race is electric and exciting, seeing every bout unfold on an IMAX screen with the unbelievable speed of each of the cars, is incredible to see and is a cinematic feat similar to seeing the fighter jets of Top Gun: Maverick dogfighting.
F1 The Movie doesn't just immerse audiences in the sport when it comes to the races themselves, but to the events surrounding them as well. Each race is given commentary, giving an in universe way of logically explaining more complicated aspects of the sport without it feeling too much like exposition as well as making the film feel more authentic and more like the races are really happening. All of the more important races too are given scenes to build them up as would be done in a real race, with national anthems and parties before and after. Again, giving audiences the feeling of being at an event such as a Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Another similarity in an ever growing list to Top Gun: Maverick that F1 The Movie has is a lack of a named antagonist. Though while the former still at least has "The Enemy", the latter doesn't provide anyone for the viewer to root against other than every other racer in each race. These other racers are in fact named, as the likes of real F1 racers Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton (who coincidentally is a producer on the film too), however they're given no character at all, possibly as they're already very well known outside of the film anyway. Indeed, as this film is more or less an advert for the sport, it feels as though the likes of Hamilton were given less character because they're of course racing against the heroes of the film, therefore naturally they'd need to be somewhat antagonistic towards Brad Pitt and Damson Idris which could hurt their real world images. This sadly in turn hurts the emotional investment of the film as there's not really any forces directly fighting against the heroes and, ergo, they don't really have anything to overcome.
Speaking of the heroes, neither Pitt's Sonny Hayes or Idris' Joshua Pearce are particularly likeable (despite both actors being very good in their respective roles) and spend a large portion of the film being nasty to each other until eventually the plot dictates that they don't. There is a sense that there's an underlying respect for one another, but this only bubbles to the surface in scenes where the plot requires them to be friendly, otherwise they're both cocky, mean and arrogant with only one of the two really learning some modesty by the film's conclusion. This ultimately means that the film, which already has a very cliched structure, also doesn't have the benefit of characters who are enjoyable to watch go through an all too familiar journey. This fact is exacerbated when a very significant event occurs halfway through the film, had the logical result of said event happened, then the film's story could have had a lot more of an emotional impact and would have given the characters something to actually race for rather than just "to win". Moreover, this event is virtually forgotten about by the end of the film, giving it little to no point of being there other than padding the runtime and adding baseless drama.
It's more than obvious that Warner Brothers and Apple Films wanted Joseph Kosinski to get lightning to strike twice, replacing fighter jets with F1 cars. While the film does succeed on a technical level, with the races and events being the film's highlights and definitely worth seeing on a big screen, the film falls flat while trying to add any sort of heart or investment in the characters or the story and in fact refuses to take any risks creatively. Fans of F1 as a sport will most likely be very entertained, but those looking for a proper emotional blockbuster would be better served looking elsewhere.
★★★
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