F1 Review

            The true testament of an A list movie star is if they can make a movie that is an original story and have that movie make a ton of money at the box office. By original story, I mean something that is not like a Marvel movie or an established franchise. Michael B. Jordan was able to do this with Sinners, and Leonardo Di Caprio is typically able to do this as well, and now there is Timothee Chalamet, who is also capable. So, in F1, we have Brad Pitt who is undoubtedly a super star but are F1 and Brad Pitt a big enough draw to make up their massive budget at the box office.

            Sonny Hayes is a race car driver. It is in his blood, and although he is no longer at the highest level of racing, he is still putting it all out there for the love of the game. So the movie starts with him doing a 24-hour race at Daytona, and he is the driving force, pun intended, that drags his team to victory. Not only is he an excellent driver, but he is also arrogant about it. When he gets out of the car once his team is handily in the lead, he threatens the driver’s life that is replacing him, if that driver were to lose the lead.

            After the race, he starts to travel across the country in his van, where he lives, when an old friend pays him a visit. That friend is now very rich, and he has stakes in an F1 team. He wants Sonny to come and drive for him. Decades ago, Sonny was an F1 driver, but he got into a horrendous crash and had been removed from the scene, but now he was getting a second chance. So much changed from when he last raced, but now he finally got the chance to showcase his skills again.

            There is one hiccup though. In F1, people race on teams, but those teammates also work as rivals, because they race in the same car essentially, so it is clear to see who is the better driver, and the team Sonny joined was at the bottom of the table, so the rookie driver Joshua Pearce was immediately put on the hot seat, and a rivalry formed, but their relationship ebbing and flowing was the heartbeat of the movie.

            Going into this movie, I knew very little about F1, other than the fact that they race in some amazing locations. I have never watched a race, but I know that Max Verstappen is basically unstoppable, but this movie was enough to make me want to watch a race one day. What I really want is for F1 to sign a deal with IMAX and start showing the races in IMAX, I think that would be awesome. I know the camera shots would not be the same, but I still think it would have the chance of being successful. They show big fights at the movie theaters, why can’t they show other sporting events there as well.

            The best part of this movie was the visuals. The opening race scene is worthy of five stars. They are doing the Daytona race, and they say its midnight, and Sonny is zooming through the field driving with reckless abandon, swerving here and there, and then fireworks start going off and the sparks are landing on the track in a visual feast for anyone who loves to watch things go fast. This was not the only incredible race scene. The movie is filled with them. They add a new impressive camera angle during the F1 races, where there is a camera mounted to the car, and it will rotate from the race to the face of the driver, and the director said that this was an intentional choice to show the viewer that the actors were driving.

            So Brad Pitt was actually behind the wheel of an F1 car, and not only that, but he was going 180 MPH. Normally they save stuff like that for stunt doubles, but in this instance it was the actual actors doing the driving, and they were traveling the circuit with F1, and they even had their own garage at the races. Basically, they were living the real life of an F1 driver. The director said that even the big crash was done practically, which is impressive. The car went flying, and it honestly took me out of the story for a second, because I thought it was obviously fake and CGI, but apparently, I was wrong, and they did launch a car into the air off the track.

            Even with it taking me out of the story mentally, I did not realize until they had gotten the driver out of the burning car and the scene cut to the hospital that my whole body was tense, and it did not relax till they had ended the scene. There were some powerful moments to the story, and I could not help but get goosebumps at the end of the movie. With that being said, the story also hit many familiar notes of other sports movies, like the second Kerry Condon came on screen, I knew that she was going to be the love interest of Brad Pitt, and they tried to play it off like it was not going to happen, but of course it did.

            Oddly enough, the whole movie reminded me of a serious Talladega Nights. In the opening of Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby gets drafted to drive a car he was not prepared to drive just like Sonny. Both films involve giant crashes where the driver has to come back. Both love interest are supposed to be nerdy girls that fall in love with the driver and help bring them back to the top, and in both movies, they adjust the cars and make them unsafe for the drivers, although in Talladega Nights, the unsafe change is putting Fig Newton across the windshield and in F1, they add a special carbon fiber plate to the bottom to make it go quicker, so it is not quite the same, and although this film did not conclude with a kiss at the finish line, it felt like it could have between Brad Pitt and his teammate.

Ultimately, I think this is a movie about someone doing what they love no matter what it does to their body. Mortality be damned. There were multiple times in the movie when Sonny said that he was not in it for the money, and he knew that his spine was in rough shape from previous accidents, and that his life was literally on the line, but this is him. This is what he does, and this is what he loves. It reminds me of the documentary about base jumping that came out last year called Fly. People who base jump do not usually live long lives, because at some point, something happens, but they are aware of that and are willing to risk their lives to do what they love. Sonny also practiced what he preached, because after the F1 season he left a potential huge pay day on the table to go race a big truck in the desert for the hell of it.

            Overall, this is a fun movie, and the 2.5 hours goes by pretty quickly. It is incredible to watch the F1 cars absolutely feast on the asphalt as they fly around. The way they turn so smooth is incredible and listening to the roar of the engines is pulse pounding. Even with the predictable story line, it keeps you interested in different ways. I would highly recommend seeing it on the biggest screen possible with the best possible sound system. Help support original stories! 3.5 Stars.