F1 News: ‘F1: The Movie’ serves up spectacle over substance
It’s been a long time coming, but F1: The Movie is finally roaring through cinemas.
Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski have delivered an immersive look into the world of Formula 1 Grand Prix racing.
However, as Film News Blitz’s David Bason explains, style is served over substance in F1: The Movie.
Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Unparalleled immersion, years in the making
Backed by legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Apple TV and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and his Dawn Apollo Films banner, Kosinski and his F1: The Movie crew embedded themselves within the Grand Prix circus for two years to create the most authentic racing film put to screen.
This saw Kosinski, Pitt, and young actor Damson Idris traverse the globe, participating in real F1 weekends with a fictional race team, APX GP, run by Javier Bardem’s Ruben Cervantes.
Joining the motley crew were Kerry Condon’s Technical Director, Kate McKenna, and Kim Bodina’s Team Principal, Kaspar Smolinski.
The result sees Pitt, Idris, and the rest of the cast of crew brushing shoulders with real-life team bosses, drivers, and reporters on several live race weekends.
Pitt and Idris took the wheel, driving on F1 circuits, while Kosinski and his production team helped imprint their APX GP cars into real races.
Combined with expert cinematography and savvy editing, F1: The Movie goes to lengths no racing movie has before.
It’s nothing short of impressive and is delivered expertly on the big screen, but it cannot be the only thing a film’s success hinges on.
Thin characters, poor representation
F1: The Movie follows Pitt’s character, Sonny Hayes, a washed-up racer who bounces from series to series searching for a motoring high he lost when crashing out of a promising young Grand Prix career in the early 1990s.
After an impressive win at the 24 Hours of Daytona, Hayes, nearly two decades older than F1’s real veteran Fernando Alonso (43), is recruited to help Bardem’s Cervantes.
Cervantes, a former rival to Hayes, has nine races to secure a victory for his APX GP team, or risk losing the outfit, despite the squad having never scored a point.
Hayes is a hail mary, thrown into the mix, up against cocky rookie Joshua Pierce (Idris), breaking rules that F1 fans would spot from a mile off that serve the film’s underdog story well.
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There’s not much to it beyond that; we get scant offerings of backstory and motivation, told through a few speeches, as the film moves on at a pace akin to the F1 cars at its centre.
It brings the film into Top Gun territory in that respect, rather than the personal, effective delivery of Kosiniki’s Top Gun: Maverick.
But the greatest concern is how F1: The Movie treats its female characters.
There’s Callie Cooke’s Jodie, a pit crew member who makes a glaring error during a stop, but comes good after a brief pep talk by Hayes.
Then there’s Condon’s character Kate McKenna.
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McKenna, as APX GP’s technical director, assumes a role no woman has ever done in real-life F1.
However, in F1: The Movie, Hayes immediately sets his flirtatious sights on McKenna, and after essentially directing how she should redesign the car, engages in a one-night romantic affair with Condon’s character.
Rather than give Condon’s character the keys to her own story, F1: The Movie reduces her to a fleeting love interest, one that actively goes against the professional boundaries she lays out early on in the film.
Given the fact that Hamilton, a long-time advocate for female empowerment in motorsport, consulted on this film, the McKenna/Hayes plot-line looks like one that flew under his radar.
It’s sadly not reflective of the strides made in motorsport in reality, and instead reflects tropes of racing movies from decades gone by.
Hayes tells McKenna he’d never previously hit on any of his technical directors, and there was no reason for him to buck this trend because his new peer was a woman.
Less than the sum of its parts
There’s a perfect film within F1: The Movie, but it falls short in key areas.
Nevertheless, the immersion and big-screen entertainment ensure this is still an entertaining affair.
However, a few upgrades are needed for F1: The Movie to match the likes of Rush and Ford v Ferrari.
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