Fast start ends in disaster for misfiring ‘F1’ movie
From the age of 10, when the immortal Jim Clark won the Indianapolis 500 in a new-fangled rear-engine Lotus, I’ve had more than a passing interest in the globetrotting sport of Formula 1, home to the finest drivers in the world. And since 2010, I’ve not missed an F1 broadcast. I love F1 for many reasons, mostly for the mix of speed, technology and strategy that instinctively affords the opportunity to play along, second-guessing managerial decisions just like you would watching a baseball game.
That’s a fundamental element that I found lacking in the overhyped “F1: The Movie,” Jerry Bruckheimer’s attempt to shoehorn “Top Gun” into an earthbound jet, restricted to solid ground by aerodynamics so advanced that the cars can corner at speeds far exceeding 100 mph. He and his “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski very much approximate that rush of heart-thumping propulsion via in-car cameras capturing tight wheel-to-wheel jousting in which the slightest error can hurl you toward the wall at 200 mph. But, alas, that’s all they do. And it gets pretty boring, er, fast.
It’s all car and no driver. Sure, a disarming Brad Pitt is behind the wheel of one of these $12 million beauties, but to what end? The picture portrays his know-it-all Sonny Hayes as a mechanical man with no inner life, not much personality and zero substance. He’s a stock character in a stock movie that attempts to disguise its significant narrative deficiencies amongst a profusion of flash and bang. You’re better off staring at a video game display for 135 mercilessly long minutes. It’s an F1 entertainment vehicle for people who either don’t like or don’t follow F1.
Even from that perspective, it fails, because the uninitiated aren’t going to have the faintest idea what the meaning is of hard, medium and soft tires, drag reduction systems (DRS), sector times, or the urgent command of “box, box, box!” “F1: The Movie” gets so deep into the weeds that you may as well be watching a 3D chess match. And that’s pretty much what F1 is – a chess match, one that only aficionados can truly understand. If you’re not hip to the lingo, you’re out of luck.
That might have been somewhat excusable had writer Ehren Kruger injected any semblance of drama into a script that plays like a vastly inferior rewrite of his screenplay for “Top Gun: Maverick.” What are the stakes? There are none, unless you count the feeble subplot about Ruben Cervantes (a slumming Javier Bardem) possibly being forced to sell if his two drivers don’t start scoring points in the season’s final nine races.
So, you sit and wait for something, anything to happen beyond a repetitive loop of Pitt’s wily old – and I mean OLD! – pro, Sonny, abruptly roused from a 30-year hiatus to knock some sense into his brash, vastly younger teammate, Joshua Pearce (a blah Damson Idris). Aware that their constant bickering is going nowhere, the film dispenses with Joshua for a long stretch in the middle and shifts focus to a flirtation between Sonny and his sexy team engineer, Kate (Kerry Condon, an Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin’), who is half his age. That, too, results in an embarrassing DNF.
So, what are we left with? Lots of race action. Most of it is preposterous and defies the laws of gravity, such as a car soaring 50 feet into the air, performing a 2½ gainer before smashing into the ground and bursting into flames. What is this? Elvis in “Speedway”? That 1968 turkey apparently is Kosinski’s inspiration for how to shoot on-track combat, with bumping and banging accompanied by breathless commentary from our real-life announcers, David Croft and Martin Brundle. Granted, the footage is thrilling initially, but it quickly grows tiresome as Kosinski runs out of ideas after 30 minutes, leaving two additional hours of been there, done that.
There are a host of cameos – Toto Wolff, Zack Brown and Fred Vasseur, among others – but again, if you don’t follow F1 it won’t register. Note to all three of those team principals: don’t quit your day jobs, unless in the case of Vasseur, your head is on the chopping block at Ferrari. But I digress. At least Vasseur would not order one of his drivers to purposely wreck a car to help win a race, as Sonny and Joshua’s team principal, Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia), demands. Nor would any driver dare dictate team strategy from the cockpit, as Sonny brazenly does more than once. In real life, he’d be kicked out on his ass to recommence his F1 exile for another 30 years.
It’s almost as laughable as the flick’s lame version of a villain in the smug Banning (Tobias Menzies), a top investor in Sonny’s Team Apex who wants to make like Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom and purposely tank the operation so he can become its next owner. And that plot point doesn’t even reveal itself until late in the picture. What?
It’s like they made this thing up as they went along, praying the racing bits would be enough to detract from its multitude of imperfections. Non-fans may be fooled, but I doubt die-hards will. They’ll see straight through the spectacle and spot a misfire, one that not only stars a Pitt but is the pits.
Movie review
F1: The Movie
Rated: PG-13 for strong language and action
Cast: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Sarah Niles and Kim Bodnia
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Writer: Ehren Kruger
Runtime: 135 minutes
Where: Now in theaters
Grade: D
