F1: The Movie is visually thrilling yet dramatically dull

Courtesy Warner Brothers

Joseph Kosinski has been chasing the legacy of Tony Scott almost since the beginning of his career, with a series of style-forward, action-heavy movies that may not have had a consistent, distinct perspective, but (nearly) always looked great and had solid momentum. In recent years particularly, Kosinski seems laser-focused on Scott’s late 80s/early 90s output, and it’s proven pretty successful.

That phase started in a literal sense, with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, a legacyquel to Scott’s iconic Top Gun that made roughly a kajillion dollars and helped theaters rebound from the pandemic. Later that same year Netflix released Spiderhead, a mostly forgettable but very stylish (and extremely loose) adaptation of a George Saunders short story that featured Chris Hemsworth radiating his best Miami Vice vibes.

With F1: The Movie, Kosinski has his Days of Thunder. You can take that in whatever context you want. For the purposes of this review, it means an unremarkable story and fast, loud cars that give you a real thrill on an IMAX screen. All spectacle, little substance, but boy is that spectacle fun.

[Full disclosure, I don’t watch Formula 1 or Drive to Survive, so none of the movie’s many cameos from actual drivers and team leads meant anything to me. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you enjoy watching these folks play themselves.]

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a former F1 driver who spun out and now spends his days basically freelance driving for various teams and living out of a Volkswagen bus traveling from opportunity to opportunity. Sonny’s old racing buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem) wants Sonny to swoop in and save his flagging F1 team, which is on the brink of being sold. Sonny joins the team, but clashes with up-and-comer Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), who’s eager to prove himself as a driver, but fears the team’s weaknesses and over-the-hill new guy will hinder his rise.

The script, by Kosinski and Transformers sequels scribe Ehren Kruger follows most of the expected beats. This is a straight three-act sports movie structure, but watered down even further by the problem of there being parallel three-act plots — Sonny’s arc and Joshua’s — going head-to-head. Joshua’s story, which nicely complicates his character alongside Idris’ nuanced, relatable performance, is easily the more interesting of the two. Unfortunately, it’s Sonny’s plot that dominates.

That makes sense for a movie trying to sell F1 racing to an American audience, but it makes the movie less dramatically interesting as a result.

Fortunately for Kosinski, a compelling story isn’t really why you’re considering buying a ticket to this movie. The real reason is that you want to watch cars go fast, do some crashes and get real loud. And boy oh boy does F1 deliver on that score.

The races in F1: The Movie are exciting and tense, while also doing an admirable job of teaching less-informed audience members (hi, it’s me) on the ins and outs of how these competitions actually work, from the strategic use of pit stops and safety cars to the science of the F1 cars themselves.

If you watch it on an IMAX screen, those races, crashes, and zoom-zooms are extra big and loud.

With Top Gun: Maverick, Kosinski proved he could provide quality, rip-roaring action and a sharp style of the kind that makes him a worthy successor to Tony Scott. This time out, he’s showing us he can do the other thing Scott did frequently: serviceable, mostly forgettable macho movies that get the job done, but don’t bear repeated viewing. F1: The Movie is basically a giant ad for Formula 1, Drive To Survive and the various corporate sponsors involved. It’s not lasting art, and it’s not meant to be, but the people involved are committed enough to command your attention and sympathy throughout.