#41: F1: The Movie

STARRING: BRAD PITT, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies and Javier Bardem. Written by Ehren Kruger. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Budget $300 million. Running time 156 minutes.

Grand Prix, Le Mans, Days of Thunder and The Love Bug, just some of the legendary films that have been made about motor racing. To that pantheon comes this, the latest, and most expensive, FI: The Movie. Starring not one, but two of the most charismatic hunks of beef on the silver screen, Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem who bring so much male sex appeal to this that it renders the need for a critical analysis of this picture practically pointless. 

The utterly improbable plot sees 61 year old 'nomadic racer-for-hire and former Formula One Driver'* Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) recruited by his old best mate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) the team owner of APXGP to help him win just one race in the last nine races of the F1 season, to save APEX from being sold off. 

And that's it. Obviously there's a young hot-headed rookie racer, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) who's also racing for Apex so the two drivers can crash heads (and cars) and the old timer can teach the youngling in a sort of Karate Kid kinda way how to race real good. Then there's the moustache-twiddling baddie, fellow APX corporate board member Peter Banning (Tobias Menzies) who wants the team to fail so he can sell them off and make money. The love interest comes in the guise of technical director and car designer Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) whose revolutionary new (SPOILER ALERT) spoiler winds the day (Geddit?).

Naturally, all the secondary characters all initially dislike Sonny, cos he's a rebel but come to respect him in the end. And talking of ends, this one literally comes down to the final race of the season and the literal final PITT stop!

Thank holy fuck for the charisma of both Bardem and Pitt is all I can say. Both men ooze such rugged male gorgeousness and charm that they double-handedly save this from being a total car crash of a movie. Brad gives a masterclass in acting and I found myself watching his face in extreme close up even in a two shot, just watching the man at work. By god he's good, he delivers lines with relaxed calm and even makes funny lines plausible. He dominates the screen and owns it to the utter detriment of everyone else, except Bardem. BTW, in case you weren't aware, Pitt is one of my passes. 

ANYWAY, what of the film I hear you groan. Well, the action is good, the races are teeth-clenching, it's directed by the bloke what did 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, although this one is far less intense than that. The trouble with F1 races is that the merest touch between cars and the race is over, and so too in the film, just when you're engaged and engrossed in a race two cars touch and it's over and it's back to the pit lane and off-track shenanigans, bickering, romance and bro-mance. This is a film with no skin in the game, the ending is never in doubt. It is, come to think of it, the equivalent of the great 1954 bio pic The Glenn Miller Story, but without the trumpets and clarinets, it presents only the good stuff and no whiff of bad behaviour or drama, apart from some youthful cockiness, and mild villiany. It's a film that is intense but never truly exciting, action-packed but also very much by the gears. 

And once it's over, you'll park it away and forget where you left it in the multi-story carpark of your memory.

7/10

*Thank you Wikipedia.