The wide-screen spectacle of gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinskiās āF1,ā a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.
to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on āMaverick,ā takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score.
And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim.
But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, , who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in āF1,ā has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantinoās In the opening scene of āF1,ā heās sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his teamās car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute.
Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and āF1ā is off to the races.
The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmerās score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the teamās chief.
Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series and the much-celebrated driver , an executive producer on āF1.ā
Whether āF1ā pleases diehards Iāll leave to more ardent But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinskiās films as well as wonders like brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When āF1ā heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the
OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? Thereās what Iād call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, itās clear that heās going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team thatās in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs.
This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but heās limited by a role ultimately revolving around ā and reducing to ā a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic.
A relationship does develop, but āF1ā struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pittās Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in Condon is a rush of naturalism.
If thereās something preventing āF1ā from hitting full speed, itās its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonnyās motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies ā from āGrand Prixā to āSennaā to ā know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine.
āF1ā steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When āF1ā does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road āF1ā might have taken.
āF1,ā an Apple Studios productions released by Warner Bros., is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong language and action. Running time: 155 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
