There’s no point in denying it. No use pretending otherwise. By any reasonable metric or measure, it remains a simple and immutable truth: men are class. And yes, dudes do, in fact, rock.
This is the most logical and self-evident conclusion to draw from F1: The Movie, a turbo-charged Dad Movie par excellence in which Brad Pitt’s star in an unreasonably priced car proves that sometimes the old ways are the best. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a onetime Formula One prodigy turned world-weary rent-a-wheelman, who is lured out of retirement for one last ride by his old friend and former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), now the owner of the struggling APXGP team.
Get more Little White Lies
Hayes is brought in to mentor the team’s number-one driver, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), a promising rookie whose F1 career is in danger of stalling before it has really begun. But it’s not long before Hayes starts asserting his alpha maleness all over the team garage, charming the pants (literally, in one case) off everyone from the mechanics to the press officer to the most influential member of the board. Everyone, that is, except Pearce, whose eagerness to best his new de facto rival will have disastrous consequences – not just for him, but for the entire team.
Director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger, who previously collaborated on 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, are reunited here to similarly earnest, chest-thumping effect. Aside from a few brief glimpses into Pearce’s home life and a somewhat laboured romantic subplot between Hayes and Kerry Condon’s Kate McKenna (hailed as F1’s first female technical director), their script mostly cuts to the chase – which is handy for a film whose runtime exceeds the average length of an F1 race. Kosinski and Kruger know exactly what their audience wants: daring overtakes, late breaking, sparks flying, spectacular crashes – and lots of it.
Indeed, the middle portion of the film plays out like an extended racing montage, the action furiously jumping from circuit to circuit – Spa, Monza, Las Vegas, Suzuka – as Hayes and Pearce begin steadily working their way up the grid. They are aided by a chassis upgrade, developed by McKenna and designed to let them drive through dirty air, and some good old-fashioned racecraft. The reckless tactics and brazen skullduggery employed by Hayes are carried off with a knowing wink and a toothy grin, but are also plainly ludicrous – to the extent you may end up parking your suspension of disbelief. Still, when the results are this thrilling, it seems churlish to nitpick about such fanciful narrative manoeuvres.
Made with the full backing of the sport’s omnipotent governing body, the FIA, many key scenes were filmed during the 2023 and 2024 British Grand Prix events, with Pitt and Idris driving adapted Formula Two cars in between actual practice sessions. The footage captured over those weekends – particularly the in-car, first-person POV shots – is astonishing. Unless you’ve driven in F1 professionally, this is as close as you’re ever likely to get to the feeling of hitting 200 mph down Silverstone’s iconic Hangar Straight.
Yet the FIA’s involvement also means that, even more than the strong smell of Brut, burnt rubber and testosterone, the film has the unmistakable whiff of an expensive, sanitised PR exercise. Several real-life big names from the Formula One paddock – including reigning World Champion Max Verstappen, seven-time champ Lewis Hamilton (who also has a producer credit on the film) and team principals such as Mercedes’ Toto Wolff and Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur – appear in background cameo roles as themselves. Not to mention a number of officials and even a few state dignitaries.
For added authenticity, the GP scenes are accompanied by broadcasting stalwarts David Croft and Martin Brundle, whose incessant expositional commentary is likely to grate on seasoned fans, but should help casual viewers grasp the finer details of what is an extremely technical sport. What is missing – albeit understandably – is any attempt to grapple with the ethical controversies surrounding Formula One, from accusations of sportswashing to concerns about its environmental impact, workplace misconduct, and personal allegations made against various senior figures within the sport and its parent organisation.
All topics worthy of wider discussion, but perhaps not in a film like this – where speed is king and subtlety is yellow-flagged; where cold reality finishes a distant second to the white-hot fantasy of a global product that, as evidenced by Netflix’s wildly popular docudrama Drive to Survive, is engineered to continuously fuel its own hype machine. If you’re looking for a serious window into the high-stakes, cutthroat world of Formula One, you certainly won’t find it here. So stick on that Fleetwood Mac CD, grab those vintage Dunhill aviators, and strap yourself in. As the late, great Murray Walker used to say – go, go, go, go!
To keep celebrating the craft of film, we have to rely on the support of our members. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.
