F1, the high-octane racing movie directed by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt, has been released in theatres, and delivers plenty of thrills for racing fans.
During the production process, real-world racing consistently crossed over with production. F1’s governing body, the FIA, assisted with production of the film. Real F1 drivers and teams appear throughout the film, such as Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, and Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton was additionally a producer on the film. Many of the racing sequences were also adapted from real F1 footage, such as the World Championships in both 2023 and 2024.
Lead actors Brad Pitt and Damson Idris did drive real cars for the movie, but not F1 cars. Instead, they drove slower F2 cars during scenes, which had F1 shells built around them, to make them look like real F1 cars. This does not do anything to dampen the racing thrills this movie holds.
This movie is an audio masterclass, especially when viewed in IMAX, which we would highly recommend. The sound mixing and audio are perfect, between both the roar of the engines on the track, and the moments where the sound drowns out, and all focus is put on the characters. Hans Zimmer’s score may not rank among his best work, but is still great.
The direction is overall solid, really coming to life in the racing scenes. The races are shot in an incredibly engaging way, one that is further enhanced through watching it in the theatre. It does a phenomenal job at making the viewer feel as if they are following these cars at incredibly high speeds.
The cast all perform well in their roles. Brad Pitt is playing Sonny Hayes, who is the typical Brad Pitt character. He’s rough around the edges, plays by his own rules, and doesn’t much care what people think about him. Damson Idris is a standout as hotshot rookie Joshua Pierce, who struggles to take the advice of people around him while chasing social media clicks and the brand.
Kerry Condon plays technical director Kate McKenna, who is responsible for ensuring her team, APXGP, has the best cars possible. Rubén Cervantes, played by Javier Bardem, rounds out the core cast of characters, desperately trying anything he can to hold onto his team.
The plot is very simple, and a bit cliché for decent stretches of runtime, but it serves its purpose of being a vehicle for these characters to clash both on and off the track. The characters are all relatively simple, with most having mostly simple arcs and progression over the course of the lengthy two-and-a-half-hour runtime. The exception to this is Idris’ Joshua Pearce, who changes the most of any character by far, and is definitely the standout of the movie.
At the end of the day, F1 is the kind of movie that knows exactly what it is, and leans into it. It knows it’s not a deep, introspective film and it knows that, so it doesn’t try to be something it’s not. It knows most people probably aren’t watching the race car movie for Oscar-worthy writing or incredibly deep and complex characters. It stays in its lane for the most part, with the audio and visuals being truly remarkable.
We recommend seeing it on the biggest screen if possible, and experiencing all the thrills F1 racing has to offer.
Rating: 8/10
