Joseph Kosinski delivers a turbocharged throwback that’s loud, long, and thoroughly entertaining.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
“F1: The Movie” gets the “Top Gun” treatment from “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski, writer Ehren Kruger, and composer Hans Zimmer, and the result is 2 hours and 35 minutes of big, bloated, summer-movie fun. It’s definitely too long and not truly great. But the racing sequences are like flying (these Formula 1 race cars are four-wheeled fighter jets). The flighty-in-more-ways-than-one film is also anchored by a fine cast led by Academy Award-winner Brad Pitt, an actor who waited a long time before getting the credit he deserves for his talent.
In “F1: The Movie,” Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a has-been or “never-was” race car driver, a cowboy reduced to living in his kitted-out vintage Ford van, a “gambling addict” with a long list of exes and a pocketful of lucky charms. Sonny has lost all his money and will drive in any race he is invited to. His mantra is, “Drive fast.” Yes, that is Led Zeppelin banging out “Whole Lotta Love” to remind us that we are watching the equivalent of heavy metal music on the big screen (the bigger the better).
Out of Sonny’s past steps, Ruben, ahem, Cervantes(Javier Bardem), a fellow racer-turned-racing-entrepreneur, who is $350 million in the hole and needs Sonny to join his team of F1 racers, engineers and mechanics, and make the team a winner. It’s the fabled “second chance” storyline with Sonny as the older man who gets a do-over. The trouble is that up-and-coming, young driver Joshua Pearce (tall and handsome Brit Damson Idris) wants no part of “elderly” Sonny, whose recklessness is legendary and who has a disregard for the rules, which he likes to bend to win.
Working almost as hard as the actors and the production team are the theaters’ subwoofers, which bang away with the deafening score and sound effects during the racing scenes, making your seat vibrate. “F1” is a film that you watch and also feel. It is thankfully less “Days of Thunder” (1990) or “Fast & Furious” (2009) and more like a throwback to the visual racing-movie spectacles that were the Cinerama effort “Grand Prix” (1966) and the Steve McQueen-fronted “Le Mans” (1971). “F1: The Movie” was shot in anamorphic widescreen with 12-Track Digital Sound.
Also getting a big boost during the film’s action are the many brand names we see on the screen alongside our cast and racing machinery: Bell, Mercedes, Porsche, Pirelli, T-Mobile and Swiss luxury watch maker IWC are just a few of the logos on display. “F1” is a commercial as well as a film.
And it has its virtues. Casting the fine Irish actor Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) in the romantic interest role is only one of the smart moves made by the film’s makers. As Kate, the team technician most concerned with the effect of wind on race cars, she anchors her scenes with Pitt’s bad boy, Sonny, with scientific precision, healthy skepticism and good humor. Also lending humor and maternal love to the story is English actor Sarah Niles (“Ted Lasso”) as Joshua’s devoted mother, who declares Sonny “a handsome man,” much to her son’s dismay.
To prepare for a race, Sonny works out and studies. He runs the Grand Prix race courses on foot in England, France, Japan, Italy, Abu Dhabi (the Abu Dhabi Film Commission is one of the film’s backers), and more to learn the courses’ lines, dips and slopes. He bounces tennis balls against the walls in his rooms. He whips playing cards at containers presumably to fine-tune his hand-eye coordination. He’s all business. But he is not averse to a few drinks the night before a race.
Joshua, who doesn’t like “JP,” the nickname Sonny has given him, is into high-tech machinery and state-of-the-art methods. He runs on a treadmill with an oxygen mask while wired to machines. He resembles nothing more than a modern-age Mercury, ready to slip the bonds of earth. The race cars themselves once resembled futuristic sculptures, but now resemble Transformers and can be quickly repaired using replacement parts that resemble those from a 3-D printer, which is likely the case.
Nothing in “F1” compares to Niki Lauda’s fiery crash in Ron Howard’s underappreciated “Rush” (2013). “F1: The Movie” is an uncomplicated film, albeit a massive undertaking, complete with a mystery-filled dizzy spell, a nasty British reporter (Andy M. Milligan) taunting Sonny about past failures, and racing announcers conveniently informing us of what’s going on. A young woman on the pit team leaves a metal tool on the ground. Watch Sonny “thread the needle” at almost 200 mph. He schemes to shave split seconds off every lap. Sonny makes fun of the way his younger self looks in archival footage. Will Sonny and Joshua work as a team? (You know they will.) At times, “F1” recalls “Gladiator” and even the chariot race in “Ben-Hur.” The film’s surprises are not new or unexpected. But are we not entertained?
‘F1: The Movie’
Rating: PG-13 for strong language and action.
Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Writers: Ehren Kruger, Kosinski
Running time: 155 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters
Grade: B+
Boston Movie News 