Review:
"F1"
Release Date: June 23, 2025 Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 156 minutes How easy would it have been for producer Jerry Bruckheimer to retrofit Joseph Kosinski and Ehren Kruger’s script for F1 into his frequent collaborator Tom Cruise’s much-desired sequel to his 1990 NASCAR soap opera Days of Thunder? Easier than taking a victory lap. Both loud and glossy motorsport dramas share the same producer in Bruckheimer and are set to uplifting scores by Hans Zimmer; feature mirror-image charismatic maverick race drivers at different stages of their life; include a subplot about building competitive race cars; and open with races at Daytona International Speedway. More important, Joseph Kosinski directed Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, and F1 feels very much of a companion piece to that adrenaline-fueled legacy sequel about mid-life redemption. While Days of Thunder starred Tom Cruise as a hotshot NASCAR neophyte, F1 positions Brad Pitt as a Formula 1 never-was given the opportunity of a lifetime. But there is so much of Cruise’s Cole Trickle in Pitt’s Sonny Hayes that it is impossible to separate one from the other. Hayes is just an older, wiser version of Trickle had Trickle never experienced early success in NASCAR. Had the F1 script ended up in Cruise’s hands, Kosinski and Kruger would not have had any trouble transforming Hayes into Trickle and changing his backstory from flaming out as a Formula 1 rookie to a NASCAR driver who failed in his bid to make it in worldwide open-wheeled racing. And it is not hard to believe that Trickle would now be intimately familiar with what makes a race car run—as Hayes does—after revealing his ignorance of race car dynamics in Days of Thunder. As well as placing racing strategy over speed in Trickle’s old age. Alas, Hayes is not Trickle, and so he must live in the shadow of his NASCAR counterpart. In F1, Hayes is a driver for hire who races not for money but for the joy of it. One weekend he’s competing in 24 Hours of Daytona, the next in the Baja 1000. Hayes receives an unexpected opportunity to return to Formula 1 more than 30 years after a near-fatal racing accident traumatized him to the point he left the circuit. Of course, team owner Ruben Cervantes (an upbeat Javier Bardem) hired his old friend and rival Hayes out of desperation. Cervantes’ team has zero wins, a cash shortage, a rash up-and-coming lead driver in Joshua “Noah” Pearce (a headstrong but callow Damson Idris), and a race car with a flawed design. It’s down to Hayes to turn the team’s season around—assuming he can bond with the equally headstrong Pearce and win over rookie technical director Kate McKenna (played with grit and determination by Kerry Condon). F1 delivers everything you expect from a high-speed sports drama with a reported $200-$300 million budget: fast and furious race sequences; on-the-track skirmishes; off-the-track fireworks; a “will-they-or-won’t they?” subplot; exotic locations; and an underdog mentality befitting of the circumstances. Pitt brings his usual charm to the proceedings but he conceals Hayes’ speedway smarts behind an air of unpredictability. You never quite know what Hayes is going to do, and this is of great benefit to a film headed toward a familiar destination. Hayes doesn’t have a need for speed. Maybe in his younger years when he possessed the physicality required to outrace the best of the best. But in his 50s, and aware that his primarily responsibility is to push his arrogance teammate to be the best version of his himself, Hayes solely relies on strategy when racing. Director Joseph Kosinski and his co-writer Ehren Kruger are less interested in how fast Hayes can drive but the tricks and tactics he applies to put himself and Pearce in a better position to win—or to least to get some points on the board. F1 is never more exciting and compelling than when Hayes gets on the track and no one—not even his teammate mate or pit crew—knows exactly what he is going on. F1 is fueled by the calculated risks Hayes takes. Whether they work or not is beside the point—it’s what Hayes does on the track that draws us into his belated pursuit of excellence. Kosinski complements this by treating the race car as not just a beautiful work of art and science but as a powerful and often dangerous extension of its driver. It’s very much what he did with the fighter jets Tom Cruise flew in Top Gun: Maverick. In F1, the race car makes the driver until the driver must learn to win without relying on all the technological bells and whistles. And Kosinski is never more comfortable than when he’s choreographing one of the many races in the film. He spares no expense when it comes to the triumphs and the tragedies, and he expertly blends practical and visual effects so everything that happens on the track looks real to even the most discerning eye. Like many motorsports films before it, F1 does a fantastic job of making the viewer feel like they are behind the wheel. The speed, the intensity, the twists and the turns—it feels so palpable. Kosinski also places an emphasis on the drama that occurs away from the race track, from the tension between Hayes and Pearce to the flirtation between Hayes and McKenna to the tested friendship between Hayes and Cervantes. The ups-and-downs of these relationship help raise the stakes in F1. Circling back to Days of Thunder, one wonders what Cruise hopes to say or explore with his proposed sequel that F1 does not. F1 is the Top Gun: Maverick of motorsports films—it just happens to be a Brad Pitt vehicle and not a Tom Cruise sequel. Aired: June 21, 2025. Web site: https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/f1 |
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