‘F1: The Movie’ Review: A Formulaic Fantasy

Formula 1’s latest attempt to branch out to a wider audience and conquer America has finally been released, after the film began filming at Silverstone in Summer, 2023 and the first trailer was subsequently released there a year later in July 2024. Now, 2 years after filming began, the film has finally arrived and it’s everything you would expect..in all the best and worst ways. 

Brad Pitt is a fine choice for the main role as Sonny Hayes. His charisma fits the character well, but that’s probably because there isn’t much of a character there in the first place and Brad just gets to be himself and deliver smug grins. Hayes’ past is explored in flashbacks and there are some moments of depth when he struggles to deliver in a race or is confronted by returning anxiety, but they’re never really explored. For a movie as long as this, it’s interesting that they managed to completely skip any character development with their main character – or any of the characters, really.

The undisputed star of this show is Damson Idris, who is kinetic as Joshua Pearce, the teammate and rival to Hayes. He’s young and cocky, attributes you don’t see in many F1 drivers these days so it’s refreshing to see a bit more of a rivalry between drivers, though that doesn’t last for long as their on-track rivalry is rarely seen. Idris is a lot of fun to watch and absolutely commands the screen: perhaps a better director could’ve capitalised on this more and strengthened his arc, focusing on these aspects that clearly have become the fan favourite parts of the movie.

In an earlier cut of the movie, Pearce was seemingly less arrogant and had more of a story for himself, that being a romance subplot with a character played by Simone Ashley, which was cut entirely from the movie for ‘narrative reasons’, though this doesn’t really make sense when now a lot of Joshua’s scenes feel cut around or like they are missing a piece – this is probably most notable when he leaves a club, though we can infer it was to go and meet his girlfriend. 

The narrative is very bare bones, there isn’t much going on here. An ex-driver who started in F1 and has raced in many different racing series is now back in Formula 1 after one scene of convincing from an old friend and now is racing alongside a younger, confident driver – you’ve seen this one before and know exactly how it’s going to go.

But the main event, the thing everyone is watching the movie for, is the racing. It looks great. The cameras they developed specifically for this are remarkable and they look very good – it’s the closest immersion to high-speed racing that there has ever been on the big screen and watching this film in IMAX or a premium format absolutely puts you in the cockpit of the car zooming around the tracks. 

However, it isn’t really utilised in the best possible way. Sure, the speed looks great and the cars racing around the track is an excellent sight but there is not a lot of wheel-to-wheel action here. In an attempt to try and stay neutral and not villanise any of the real-life drivers or teams, there is a strong element of neutrality around the whole film, which leaves it feeling detached from Formula 1 despite a strong attempt to integrate within it. Sure, we see them standing alongside other drivers for the anthem and getting in the cars alongside them before the races but there is no off-track conversations, no relationship with the rest of the grid and no actual racing between teams. 

In order to add some antagonistic force, instead of creating any interesting relationships or something that could link to the main racing heart of the movie, they have to add in a random suit who wants to take over the business because this movie needs someone for us to be against. Another character that is not developed at all and only exists because we need an antagonist and the crew are too scared to make it anyone that has a real-life persona.

The only instances of wheel-to-wheel racing are between the two APX drivers, but even that is few and far between as racing for a few seconds often results in a crash or is quickly brushed over to see their car miraculously weaving through the others.

The good visuals may distract you from the fact that there is not a lot actually happening on the track but once you notice it, it becomes quite distracting. This may be because the drivers at APXGP seem to not be able to do much aside from constantly crashing, especially Sonny Hayes. Minor spoilers to follow:

There is a scene in the movie, during the race in Hungary, in which Hayes crashes his car continuously every single lap in order to cause a safety car to come out and give his teammate an advantage and rise up in positions. As should seem obvious, this is highly illegal in Formula 1 and a similar real-life event became the infamous 2008 scandal ‘Crashgate’, which led to multiple personnel being banned from F1 for life and a team being removed from the sport. Thus, it’s interesting that F1 signed off on this movie with this being a major plot point and are happy with this being the public perception of what is allowed in the sport.

Audiences who have no interest in the sport will probably brush this off, which is fine, but anyone actively interested in the actual workings of the sport and seeing real racing will no doubt be very annoyed by this constant crashing and lack of actual racing, as I was. There are other, smaller problems with this scene. A team that is in such financial ruin as Apex apparently is, they cannot afford to be damaging a front wing every lap so surely someone should’ve stepped in to stop Sonny for the sake of their finances, but nobody does.

As anyone remotely interested in racing will know, the actual racing and role of a driver is only half of the sport. The other half is devoted to car development and strategy, as you can only get so far with a rubbish car – unless you’re Max Verstappen. 

That’s why it’s so disappointing to see that aspect of Formula 1 completely overlooked – there is even the typical Hollywood moment of realising they could’ve made the car faster the whole time and developing one car part overnight that magically takes it from the slowest car on the grid to the fastest. A team as poor as APX having the most expensive wind tunnel and being able to create magical car parts overnight is a miracle. 

All this conveys to the audience is that this film is not made by people who actually care about Formula 1, but instead just wanted to make a racing movie at the same time as F1 was trying to expand into a larger American market and the combination was too perfect to pass up. Kosinski got to film his racing scenes and then let everything else figure itself out. His direction is flat and outside of the car scenes, there isn’t anything remarkable or remotely interesting going on.

It would be remiss to mention the overwhelming stench of masculinity and misogyny that encompasses the whole movie. The team’s technical director, played by Kerry Condon, is another nothing character that exists only as a love interesting for Hayes which is disappointing when she plays the first female technical director and instead of making inspiring choices and portraying her in a strong way, she immediately gives in to Sonny’s advances and is reduced to existing only for him.

There is also a female mechanic that works for the team, the only mechanic that is focused on in the movie and she is portrayed as incredibly clumsy and stupid, always making mistakes and messing up until the two male drivers come in and patronise her and help her ‘fix herself’ and improve. The only two big female characters in the movie as they exist only to benefit the arc of Sonny Hayes, with nothing to benefit their own existence.

It is a shame that in a sport that’s already engulfed in heavy misogyny that is slowly being changed and challenged, mostly by Susie Wolff who heads the F1 Academy, that we are still having female representation in this way and it’s just another way this movie completely abandons anything it should stand for or represent in order to be ‘The Brad Pitt movie’

The story is as basic as you expect, the characters are collections of tropes, the racing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and the FIA does not exist in this world.

It’s a rough watch for F1 fans and anyone who cares for the sport, but will no doubt be enjoyed by those who have no skin in the game and are just here for 2 and a half hours of fun and mindless entertainment.

F1: The Movie is directed by Joseph Kosinski and stars Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies and more. Joseph Kosinski, Jerry Bruckheimer, Jeremy Kleiner, Chad Oman and Lewis Hamilton serve as producers.

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