Directed By Joseph Kosinski
Starring – Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
The Plot – Dubbed “the greatest that never was,” Sonny Hayes (Pitt) was Formula 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Bardem), owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team’s hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition, and he finds that the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.
Rated PG-13 for strong adult language, and action.
POSITIVES
In an age where moviegoers are desperately seeking out the one-of-a-kind unique theatrical experience, “F1” comes along to dazzle audiences in the magic of movies, with Kosinski and his production immersing us as close as possible to the dangers and velocities of speed racing, which appraise an admirable perspective for this often misunderstood sport. In the same ways that Kosinski placed us directly into the claustrophobic confines of a fighter jet cockpit, in “Top Gun: Maverick”, he once again articulates the scope, spectacle and overwhelming exhilaration of the think-fast intensity that comes with seeking the ultimate competitive rush, with every inch of film eliciting enamoring imagery within its unique perspective that flourishes with the kind of urgency and vulnerability factors that passionately conjure suspense in a situation so uncontrollably chaotic. It starts with the breathtaking cinematography from Claudio Miranda, with not only a variety of complex angles in, out and around the cars that casually survey the inevitability of the environments that are constantly at play, but also smoothly sharp editing that makes these sequences weave naturally in and out of colliding confrontation with a surprising amount of clarity and coherence, despite such speeds often being difficult to properly convey on cameras so involved in the center of these high stakes conflicts. This is then matched brilliantly by the intricacies of the movie’s sound design, with all of its roaring applause, rumbling collisions, and whizzing definition in speeds playing like a chorus of frenetic frenzy that never disappoints in capturing and holding our attention, even in a sport that I myself have very little interest in. Cap this all off with the maestro himself, Hans Zimmer, constructing a thunderously rampant score that could play inspiringly in any stadium in the world, and you have a magnetism for compelling drama that not only materializes some of cinema’s most ambitious sequences of the year, but also an easing of the audience towards the movie’s inflated two-and-a-half hour runtime, which fly by the most breezily effortless whenever the storytelling shifts its gears back to the track. Speaking of storytelling, the script from “Maverick” co-writer, Ehren Kruger is anything but perfect, but it does do a solid job of articulating such complex characterizations that certainly don’t abide by the conventionalism of typical protagonists and antagonists alike. This is especially the case for Pitt’s Sonny, as he’s a very flawed and often selfish influencer who collides with his peers off of the track just as much as he does on it, and as to where this articulating would typically clash with investing in a man so stubborn, it actually has the opposite here, as Sonny unloads some psychological baggage during the movie’s second half that clues us into his mentalities without deliberately justifying them, and it leads to a far more elaborate character study for the movie’s protagonist than I was expecting in the confines of a sports movie. That also feels like the opportunistic time to transition to some of the movie’s decorated performances, as Pitt, Bardem, and especially Condon are nothing short of mesmerizing in undertaking three distinctly differing personalities, each with their own challenges that they bring to this important year in the lifespan of this losing race team. Pitt isn’t necessarily asked to do his most dramatically layered work here, but the radiant charisma elicited from such a gracefully enacted cool factor zero in on the movie star presence that Pitt still commands without stalling, leaving enough room for a fiery registry during stake-shifting conflicts with everyone from his co-driver, to the media, to greedy team management, that makes the character such an unpredictable factor to any room or interaction that he walks into. Bardem is also quite charming as the team owner, not only for the tender chemistry that he shares with Pitt while utilizing a long-time friendship between the two characters, but also a helpless inability towards keeping matters from crumbling, which allow Javier to unfurl with erratic anxiety that illustrate the weight of the world continuously hanging on this guy’s shoulders. But for me, it’s ultimately Irish lass-kicker Kerry Condon who commands the screen most out of the highly talented ensemble, with her portrayal of Kate summoning a tough-as-brass team leader without the fear and trepidation of opening anyone’s eyes to the reality of what’s transpiring. Because of such, Condon captures the tenderly affirming and resilient sides of Kate that inscribe so much personality and depth to her candid portrayal, reminding us just how seamlessly smooth that Condon fits into every movie or environment, with the passionate emphasis that only a veteran of her limitless talents can capably muster.
NEGATIVES
At the end of the day, this is still a sports film, so the need to indulge in a variety of time-honored character tropes leading to a predictably obvious screenplay with telegraphed character motivations takes the film’s momentum down a noticeable step, crafting this familiar feeling like we’ve seen this movie play out before, even without actually seeing the entirety of the movie through. Even avoiding the obvious comparisons to Kosinski’s previous film, in which an edgy veteran collides with a care-free youth, the film taps into a virtual checklist of sports movie cliches from any movie within the subgenre that you’ve ever seen, and it made me wish the film took more effort to distance itself from such obvious depictions, especially with the dialogue already plagued by constantly forced humor that took the naturalism and integrity out of every interaction. While the script is thankfully able to avoid obviously meandering dialogue that places exposition in a neat and tidy bow for audience ease, it does seem to have a strange fixation with ill-timed humor, which not only broke my investment to realizing these characters as living, breathing entities, but also quite frequently took the emotional integrity out of a variety of scenes and sequences during the movie’s first half, which made Kosinski’s need to be airy and accessible come across as desperately repetitious. The comedy works occasionally towards inscribing levity to interactions defined by hostility, but far too often they intrude on a defining moment that I wish the script would let play out, keeping the film from ever fully exploring the dark territory that it earns in mental and physical trauma of one character attempting to right the wrongs of their disastrous past. Beyond trope overload and forced humor, the film’s two-and-a-half hour runtime is a bit unnecessary in the confines of the story that is being told, resulting in a creative juxtaposition between the movie’s halves, which snuck up on me tediously the longer the film persisted. For the first half of the movie, the storytelling feels quite rushed, with a couple of montages smoothing out contrived character motivations, and the second half overloading us with subplot development in ways that directly slow down the movie’s pacing. It never bored me, but it did test my patience in some scenes spanning a bit longer than necessary, and it feels like there’s an incredible two hour cut of this movie, in which the pacing feels consistent by minimizing more of the down time that lingers especially during the third act.
OVERALL
“F1” might be a spectacle sports movie, above all else, but it’s one that Joseph Kosinski artistically executes to immerse us in the drama and anxieties behind the wheel of vehicles that travel in excess of 200 MPH, with enrapturing sound design and compelling camera placements that get us as close to the danger as the screen’s safety net can possibly conjure. While the film’s efforts are occasionally stalled by a screenplay with a checklist of familiar tropes and cliches, its charismatic cast and masterful artistry give it enough fuel to cross the finish line of an overly ambitious two-and-a-half hour runtime, breathing life and opportunity into theaters whose model for future success certainly requires a pit stop.
My Grade: 7.9 or B