F1

It was only two years ago that Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski were credited with saving movie theaters, bringing audiences across a wide variety of demographics out for their Top Gun legacyquel. Until its release, only superhero movies had cracked $200 million domestic since the onset of COVID-19. Afterwards, that landscape is more diverse, with the following year bringing us the likes of Barbie and Oppenheimer and The Little Mermaid. It cemented Tom Cruise as the avatar of the movie theater, and brought Kosniski's name to the lips of nearly every adult in America after a decade of failing to make a strong positive impact simultaneously with audiences and critics. His follow up was destined to be a big event, and was always going to be described in relation to Maverick. Maybe that's why he remade his own movie, but with fast cars this time.

Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitts) is one of the best drivers in the world, but hasn't raced F1 since a devastating wreck derailed his promising career in his first season, thirty years ago. His old friend and teammate Reuben (Javier Bardem) recruits him to help his racing team survive, as it's threatened with a forced sale after failing to win a single race in their three-year existence. Reuben's second driver is talented young hotshot Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), fame obsessed and cocky as hell, who spends more time clubbing than in the simulator or getting to know his car. It's an uphill battle to get these two men on the same page, as it immediately becomes a dick measuring contest, with Sonny showing up and immediately dictating everything about how the team should operate, ignoring that F1 is a team sport in favor of "My way or the highway". As much as it pisses everybody off, they can't argue with their improved finishes. But will Sonny's "I am the team" mentality be enough to get them an actual win?

Sonny's constant undeniable success makes it clear this movie is not at all interested in the push and pull between past and present, young and old, raw talent and earned experience. It's firmly a nostalgia piece, yearning for the old ways, and insistent that they were the best. We're constantly shown comparisons between the two men, and in every single instance argues Sonny is in the right. Every time they come into conflict, which is quite often, Sonny belittles him and Joshua acts entitled and Sonny gets the last word while Joshua looks like an impotent, wounded puppy. You expect that at some point, their relationship will evolve in some way, that they'll begin to work as a team or at least Joshua will start to learn from Sonny. But that moment never comes. Instead, we get the constant rise of tension up and up and up, which does come to a head in spectacular fashion - only to quickly pick up where it left off before heading into the finale. The lack of release makes the story feel inert, despite the speed we see on screen.

Sonny displays a tremendous amount of hubris, but the script refuses to humble him, which makes it hard to like him. Pitt's natural charisma almost makes it work, but writer Ehren Kruger cannot help but humiliate Joshua every chance he gets, so it never turns into the battle of wits you'd want. In fact, Sonny gets the upper hand on everyone to whom he condescends: the pit crew, the strategy team, the mechanics, technical director Kate (Kerry Condon), and more. The one time it goes wrong is because the person receiving his verbal abuse doesn't listen. He is a magical racing wizard, and he's determined to single-handedly deliver this team a win, with every other member of the crew (including his fellow driver) a pawn in his game. He is fiercely competitive, willing to do anything it takes to win, which could be exciting to watch. Instead, he repeatedly pulls off incredibly dangerous maneuvers that threaten the lives of his fellow drivers, again suffering no consequences in any form.

As such, the character development is completely nonexistent. While Joshua and Sonny do work together a few times, Sonny's antics never afford Joshua any agency, so we don't even see his driving improve in any meaningful way. Kate and Sonny's burgeoning relationship is telegraphed by a few well executed glances from Condon and Pitt, but we never feel any spark between them. It's an inevitability of the plot structure, not a consequence of the way they're constructed. None of it gives you any reason to stay engaged between the racing scenes.

Speaking of which, they're pretty good! It should come as no surprise that the director of Top Gun: Maverick is skilled at making you feel the speed and power of big, dangerous machines. It's even more palpable here, for while they're not going as fast, they're doing so competitively. They jockey for position, block and bump each other, and sometimes wreck. The pit stops are lightning quick, driving home just how precise they have to be. The camera work is solid, although the frequent use of quick cuts distances you from the action. There are a lot of close ups mid-race, enabled by Pitt and Idris doing most of their own driving (albeit using slightly slower F2 cars). There are some neat individual shots, most notably one in which Joshua passes another driver on a straightaway, and the camera smoothly moves out and sweeps around the car to follow the action while mimicking its motion. All of this, plus bunch of other little flourishes, come together to make each race pretty exciting.

The biggest letdown was how few innovations there were in the camerawork. Their focus was on executing and improving what came before. Even its most distinct shot, a whip pan in which a forward facing camera on the side of the car flips around to face the drive, is a refinement of a shot first used in Grand Prix almost sixty years ago. That's true of all the most interesting shots, laying bear just how much the earlier John Frankenheimer film influenced both Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda. There's nothing wrong with copying killer shots, and doing your job well is not to be undervalued, to be clear. But a summer blockbuster being sold as this big and bold should have some tricks up its sleeve to break out during the finale if it wishes to really wow us. Their absence threatens to leave each race feeling like all the others.

At the end of the day, there really just isn't much meat on this bone. The spectacle is there, but it's all there is, and it doesn't seem too interested in pushing the limits. So we're left with a pretty good looking movie with pallid drama and good performances applied to hollow characters. That's just not what you want when aiming to be one of the few movies some people will see in theaters this year, especially with a few high-profile ones right around the corner.