F1: The Movie sets out to prove F1 drivers aren’t just a bunch of entitled prix.
Formula 1 has always known how to brand itself. A sport built on the absurd profligacy of throwing millions of dollars at shaving milliseconds; it practically invented the luxury-industrial complex long before the parasitical presence of influencers infested every aspect of every industry with the practice. F1: The Movie, of course, has little interest in challenging or interrogating the machinery of the sport, instead preferring to reverentially polish it until it gleams like carbon fibre under LED paddock lights. It’s corporate commercial excess at its most seductive, and while the film never pretends to be more than a hyper-glossy advertising campaign for the sport it desperately wants to mythologise, it is a masterclass in how to make the familiar feel thrilling.
Brad Pitt coasts into the role of Sonny Hayes with the kind of low-rev, high-torque charisma that’s arguably always been his gear of choice. A comeback king drafted into the fictional APXGP team as a last-ditch attempt to rescue their season, Hayes is every inch the weathered maverick with a troubled past and unfinished business. Pitt sells it by not overplaying it and the script, mercifully, doesn’t waste time pretending we haven’t seen this story before. F1: The Movie is a fairly basic sports movie recipe. But even the most basic recipe, when prepared with professional skill and artistry and using the freshest and finest ingredients possible – real circuits, real crowd footage, real-world F1 talent orbiting the edges and an exemplary ensemble – can result in a dish to savour.
According to the Sports Movie Template, where you have a grizzled veteran comeback, you must have a young up-and-coming prodigy who at first resents, then learns to respect, the seasoned interloper and for F1: The Movie, Damson Idris provides the necessary generational friction as hotshot teammate Joshua Pearce, whose sponsorship-lacquered career and digital-native ego clash predictably but effectively with Hayes’ instinctive style and old-school gut driving. It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be. The point isn’t to reinvent the wheel – just to fit it with brand new Pirellis and hit the track at speed.
Javier Bardem, in suave, sharply tailored mode, holds things together as APGXP team principal Ruben, delivering exposition with the theatricality of a man who knows this is the most fun he’ll have all year while Kerry Condon gives film a veneer of gender equality as pioneering lead engineer Kate Jackson, serving just enough exasperated backbone to keep the political and romantic dynamics from collapsing entirely under the weight of the film’s default masculinity. The inevitable thaw between her and Hayes arrives on schedule, not because it’s surprising, but because it would be silly not to in a film that wants to entertain and, if not educate and inform, then certainly indoctrinate. The branding, naturally, is omnipresent. SharkNinja and Tommy Hilfiger certainly benefit from their prominent association with the fictional APXGP livery, clinging like barnacles on a billionaire’s yacht. The film doesn’t hide it – why would it? Formula 1 is a sport that turned sponsorship into its dominant religion, if not its primary industry.
What elevates F1 from glorified advert to credible crowd-pleaser is director Joseph Kosinski’s attention to the detail and kinetic filmmaking sensibilities. Yes, there are dashboard-mounted cameras and deafening trackside moments to keep the IMAX crowd happy, but the man who shepherded another ageing has-been through his comeback in Top Gun: Maverick makes sure the physics of the sport aren’t just a backdrop. Tyre degradation, pit strategy, weather, and politics all get their moment, articulating the tactical nuances and strategic elements of racing in a way Gran Turismo abjectly failed to do. F1 isn’t just a movie about drivers – it’s about the whole egregiously complex ecosystem that allows drivers in logo-choked overalls and their support teams to make split-second decisions at 200mph.
Zimmer’s score leans hard into Vangelis territory, all synth shimmer and operatic momentum, which fits the film’s mood perfectly. The romance of racing is the product, and the film sells it with shameless sincerity. From Silverstone to Spa to Suzuka, the film doesn’t just globe-trot for scenery’s sake. Each locale is rendered as a cathedral of combustion, a reminder that Formula 1 has long outgrown its European gentleman racer roots to become a multinational theatre of speed, status and conspicuous consumption. Of course the film’s final showdown is set in Abu Dhabi. Where else could you set the finale of a hagiography of a sport of unfathomable wealth and automotive excess except in a venue that matches, beat for beat, the sport’s uncritical embrace of egregious consumption and environmental indifference; the most ostentatious sport in the world, crowned in the most ostentatious location possible. It’s absurd. And it works.
It’s true that F1: The Movie never quite manages to be more than a premium-grade sports film with a high-gloss finish. But it’s also self-aware enough to understand that when the machinery is this well-oiled, the formula doesn’t need tinkering. It just needs to run fast, sound great, and justify an industry which costs more than the GDP of a small country.
