F1 The Movie Review

F1 The Movie (as the posters and the Letterboxd listing assure us) may be a bought-and-sold advertisement for Formula One racing, but hey, there are some great, well-made commercials out there, even if they are selling a product. If you’re looking for an in-depth analysis of the behind-the-scenes politics of that sports organization, this is not that movie.

But if you’re looking for vroom vroom cars that go fast, this delivers solidly on that front. This is the kind of summer movie that Hollywood used to churn out with regularity in the 1980s – so much so that I half-expected a Kenny Loggins song on the soundtrack. And while we don’t get any of Master Loggins’ musings on danger zones, loose feet, or dancing prairie dogs, F1 The Movie feels very much of that era. This may be the best movie of 1989.

We’re at an interesting time for big-budget moviemaking. Most of the standard IPs aren’t getting it done, and Hollywood is, if anything, cyclical by nature. This has happened before, as the major studios try to fill the gaps and produce something that will be successful. Many times, they dive into the past and make movies that feel very much of an age now passed.

F1 The Movie is old-fashioned and old school in that way (this is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, after all), and that’s not a bad thing. This may be the ultimate dad movie, full of those intangibles that make men my age sigh, sit back in the recliner, pour a drink, and relax. You know exactly where this movie is going, and that’s perfectly fine.

What is unexpected is the level of filmmaking skill on display – every dollar Apple Studios and Warner Bros. spent is evident on screen. This is one of those movies that doesn’t feel like they held back on the budget, from cinematography, effects, score, and casting. Indeed, the IMAX camerawork is jaw-dropping, and Claudio Miranda’s Oscar nomination for cinematography is all but certain. The camera swoops between cars going almost 200 miles an hour and gets us street-level viewpoints that are visually astonishing.

I’m certain that there are a lot of visual effects at play here, but I couldn’t tell – it all looks practically shot, and I’d love to see how they got those bulky IMAX cameras in some of these shots. Frankly, if you’re going to see this in the theater, there’s no point in seeing it any other way than IMAX (although I am tempted to try this in 4DX), and try to go to a real IMAX screen if you can. It’s all shot in that aspect ratio, making everyone tower on screen like gods surveying their creation.

The producers could have gotten away with casting an actor who’s not as above the marquee as Brad Pitt, but Pitt adds class, charm, and even gravitas to the proceedings, and he earns that movie star paycheck. There are very few actors left with that kind of star power and the ability to access it on command, and Pitt makes it seem effortless.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, who has been racing different kinds of cars for most of his life. He once tried his hand at Formula One, but after a nasty crash more than 30 years ago, he walked away from it and spent his time racing in other places, including Daytona. But lifelong friend and fellow racer Ruben (Javier Bardem) needs Hayes to race his Formula One car to save his company from being sold and leaving Ruben broke.

He also needs Hayes to help break in a rookie driver, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), and Pearce resents this “old man” trying to teach him the ropes, this racer who has never won, or even finished, a Formula One race. Kate (Kerry Condon) also feels like she has something to prove – in a field with very few, if any, women car designers, Kate wants to put her vehicles to the test and needs an experienced driver to do it. There are only 9 races left in the circuit for the year, and Ruben needs the points for his company to continue, and needs Hayes to deliver.

Director Joseph Kosinski seems to understand how to best approach the material – a full-on deep-end-of-the-pool immersion into the world of Formula One racing. The technical of the rules of Formula One can be a bit confusing, and the script by Kosinski and Ehren Kruger guides us through some of the more daunting aspects of the sport. For people not familiar with the system, the goal isn’t necessarily to win each race, but to move up the car’s position in the next one, making it easier to finish ahead.

These races can be decided in split seconds, and the vehicle position can be life or death in the race. Hayes knows the system, while Pearce wants to run headlong into the fray, and Hayes needs to teach Pearce patience and temperance, and to trust his team. This is all familiar stuff to anyone who has ever seen a sports movie before, but Kosinski is able to keep it fresh, and F1 The Movie is always visually interesting, even when the movie gets bogged down in detail from time to time.

Kosinski doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel here, and the film could be shorter by about 20 minutes, but he does keep everything moving at a good pace. This feels very much like the director who made Top Gun: Maverick, and if anything, this movie could be a spiritual sequel to that film. If you squint, this could have been a full-on sequel to Days of Thunder had they cast Tom Cruise instead of Pitt, but that may be too on-the-nose.

Every dollar spent on the budget looks like it made its way onscreen, at least – this is big-budget filmmaking at its pinnacle. Frankly, they build theaters to play this kind of movie. Hans Zimmer’s score is quite good – full of orchestral bluster but without the atonal cacophony that Zimmer’s given in recent years.

The performances outside of Pitt’s get the job done – I especially liked the relationship between Bardem and Pitt, whose characters are friends without giving them unnecessary conflict just to have it. Newcomer Damson Idris holds his own with Pitt, and the script gives Idris enough meat-and-potatoes material that he elevates it well.

I’m curious how F1 The Movie does in this cinematic climate; it’s the kind of crowd-pleaser that Hollywood made a ton of in previous decades but seems to have difficulty making these days, and while it’s not exactly IP-based, it’s familiar enough that audiences will likely come away feeling like they got their money’s worth. It could almost be considered critic-proof –its flaws are overcome by the skill of the filmmakers and the budget.

This could almost be a Roger Corman drive-in movie, if Corman had almost a billion-dollar budget (and let’s be honest, if Corman had that kind of budget, he would have never put it in the movie itself). A well-made cheeseburger is still a cheeseburger, but when you’re biting into one, it doesn’t matter if it tastes good. F1 The Movie is a high-end, satisfying cheeseburger, and it does the job. That sounds like faint praise, but I’d much rather sit through F1 again than some of the franchise maintenance we’ve been getting lately.

F1 THE MOVIE REVIEW SCORE: 7.5 OUT OF 10

Rated PG-13 for strong language and action, Warner Bros. Pictures will release F1 The Movie in theaters on Friday, June 27, 2025.