Watched: 07/24/2025
Format: Drafthouse
Viewing: First
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Growing up in the US, racing has been mostly NASCAR, and I just never got into stock car racing. But Austin is, for vaguely shady reasons, home to an F1 track, and we all went from finding it weird to being kind of proud of it. It's not Monaco or anything, but it's a feature few other cities have. And, anyway, I started watching some videos about F1, and it is really neat. But I'm only aware enough of autosports to know that they are infinitely complex and I don't know how any of it works. But rocket cars go super fast and that is cool.
Something about the trailer for F1: The Movie (2025) had me sold. But I thought I'd probably see it at home on HBO eventually. However, SimonUK had seen it, liked it, and recommended I check it out, so we went together.
And, yeah, I dug it. Quite a bit, if I'm being honest. If I came to watch F1 cars zip around, it does that a lot.
After the movie was over, SimonUK stated "it's basically Top Gun: Maverick in cars, but... it works" and that is very correct. This movie is directed and written by the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, so do your own math.
The story of F1: The Movie is very simple, but flourished with wildly complicated F1 details that I will go to my grave wondering if they're bullshit or not. Brad Pitt plays a guy who is a freelance driver for races, and you learn that back in the mullet-y 1990's, Pitt's character was briefly an F1 driver who had a terrible crash. His old pal from those days, Javier Bardem, shows up - now the owner of an F1 racing team - and asks Pitt to help him finish what has been a disastrous season so far.
There's a young, cocky driver with natural talent (Damson Idris) and a doting mother (Sarah Niles!) and a curiously foxy lead designer (Kerry Condon), and races, races, races.
How is the racing? It is really why you're here, even though the movie goes through the motions of having a story and characters more than it needs to- and those stories do work. In my opinion, the racing is awesome. Cameras are placed all over, so the rush of the cars feels absolutely visceral - and the action tends to last just the right amount of time where you have a bit of a mini-narrative to each race that pushes the overall story forward. The danger inherent in F1 feels very real. And while I am sure CGI is used extensively, you'd never know because it's not like the cars are changing into robots or shooting lasers, and things cut together seamlessly.
The movie contains a lot of F1 strategy I do not quite get but the movie tries very hard to make clear, and at least explains what happened as a result of Pitt's maneuvering. And there's a business move in the last third that completely lost me, but we got the basic gist of it. I don't know shit about tires or foils or floors or whatever the hell. But if you have a high schooler's basic grasp of street cars and tires, thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, you can probably follow along. Now, actual racing strategy and the rules both real and unspoken, I barely know. And that's fine - you'll get by.
At the end of the day, this is a movie about a guy who is chasing a certain kind of high he can only get behind the wheel, and he'll do anything to maximize that feeling. And it may have taken til now and the cameras and placement we can do to really get in that headspace as an audience, and not just be told the hero is feeling that high. There's much to be said for the photography here and the evolution in technology and technique that can put us behind the wheel of one of these cars.
Because the movie is about the very international sport of F1, the film is at $470 million right now, globally, and with not a superhero in sight. So it's nice to know movies like this can do really well - in a summer where movies seem to be a thing people do again.
The movie falls squarely in the "the seasoned pro is actually right about things" mode that movies only get to do if they're being sold to people over 40, and I am pretty sure *everyone* in the theater with us was over 40 except one kid there with their parents. But it was opening night for Fantastic Four and Superman is still out, so... This will irk some who believe all movies must be about how the youth will lead the way - but, I am so sorry The Youths, sometimes experience actually does matter. And people with experience instead of on the learning curve are *interesting*.
There's absolutely a sort of gunfighter mentality to the whole thing - of the old veteran who has stayed out in the wilds too long and can't come back in to normal society to the narrative. And mostly if you're that kind of guy and over 40 in real life, you're a walking caution flag. And the movie kind of embraces that notion. Pitt is nice enough, but I am not sure I'd let him babysit my dog.
I have quibbles, but I felt like if you're going to make this movie, this is a good one.
I guess my one question at the end of the film was why they didn't keep going with the young woman in the pit crew, because it felt like she had a story and it just got dropped.
On a side note - I kinda think Pitt is in the same place Robert Redford was in the late 1990's or 00's as a film star. People remember him from his heyday. He can act and still pull in a crowd. He lacks Redford's gravitas and social record, so it's different, but I will be curious what he keeps doing as he moves into a period where he can't claim a 40-something woman is an age appropriate love interest.
I will say, watching a Jerry Bruckheimer movie shortly after watching this YouTube was kind of weird, because F1: The Movie is absolutely the evolution of the old formula.
And now I need to watch this one:
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