| Worth seeing: | to experience Formula 1 from the cockpit - via the press conference - to the hotel room |
| Director: | Joseph Kosinski |
| Featuring: | Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Callie Cooke, Kim Bodnia, Lewis Hamilton, Samson Kayo, Sarah Niles, Shea Whigham, Tobias Menzies |
| Length: | 155 minutes |
| Certificate: | 12A |
| Country: | US |
| Released: | 25th July 2025 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
It’s been thirty years since Sonny Hayes’s (Brad Pitt) Formula 1 career shuddered to a halt with a major accident, but he still loves racing cars. He doesn’t do it for the money, but for the thrill – he’s at his happiest when he feels like he’s flying.
Sonny’s just helped his team to win the Daytona 24 hour race and he’s looking for his next challenge, when his former F1 team-mate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), turns up and offers him a seat on his own struggling F1 team.
With the old-timer returning to the sport, racing alongside rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), suddenly everyone is talking about APXGP, which is at the bottom of the championship table, having never had a top ten finish, and is under threat of being bought out. The only way for Ruben to keep his hands on his team is for one of his drivers to win a Grand Prix – but most of the season is already behind them.
When he reluctantly accepts the challenge, Sonny and his new team-mate seem more like enemies, but as the final few races of the season come and go, the team’s fortunes slowly take a turn for the better.
But to go from the worst team on the grid to winning a Grand Prix, in only nine races, is surely the kind of thing that can only happen in the movies.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Shot in IMAX, F1 puts the fastest and loudest sport onto the biggest screen, and gets you about as close to the experience of speeding around the track as most people will ever get, with in-car cameras and editing that’s as quick as a blink. But, of course, it’s not all about the racing – there are characters and a story to consider too.
With Brad Pitt at its heart, we are expected to accept a man in his 60s returning to one of the most physically gruelling sports and managing to hold his own but this star – and producer – certainly looks every bit the sportsman and action hero and he retains the cheeky charm and confidence that has made him one of the biggest box office draws in the business.
Javier Bardem makes an acceptable foil, making up the other half of this motor racing odd-couple – although you might wonder why Bardem himself didn’t get back behind the wheel.
But the other characters are all archetypes, straight off the shelf – from the cocky upstart with a supportive mother to the no-nonsense team director, the sleazy financier and sassy technical director Kate (Kerry Condon); the film presents itself as forward thinking, having the first Formula One team to have a female technical director and then undoing this societal progress by having her fall for the male lead – of course.
Having the full backing of the sport’s own governing body, the cars and suits are covered in more branded advertising than an in-flight magazine and the background is peppered with stars from the sport – most prominently Lewis Hamilton, who also has a producing role – making us wonder to what extent young Joshua is based on him.
To help us understand some of the mechanics and tactics of the sport, each race is accompanied by authentic sounding race commentary – although if this is meant to be the actual race commentary, you might wonder why it’s quite so expositional and why it almost exclusively concentrates on the worst team on the grid and barely mentions the race leaders.
And however good a mentor – or driver – Sonny Hayes might be, it never quite feels real that a team can come from nowhere to being a contender through the arrival of someone who hasn’t sat in an F1 cockpit for 3 decades – and someone who is as much of a Maverick in the car as he is out of it.
It’s clearly the type of character favoured by the director Joseph Kosinski, best known for his work with another producer/star/Hollywood Brand, Tom Cruise, in Top Gun: Maverick.
F1 is an easy watch, designed to be enjoyed on the biggest screen possible but with no pretensions that it’s telling us anything about humanity that we don’t already know.