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F1: The Movie ***½/**** starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem screenplay by Ehren Kruger directed by Joseph Kosinski
by Walter Chaw The first movie I saw in a theatre was Star Wars, in 1977. I had just turned four and didn’t speak a word of English. The 45rpm read-along storybook my parents subsequently bought for me helped me take my first steps towards learning the language. And the sense of exhilaration I felt watching Star Wars that first time? I’ve never equalled it, and never will. There are highs in life you experience once; though you may chase that feeling for the rest of your life, you chase it in vain. The problem with a film like Joseph Kosinski’s F1 is that it is very much like hundreds, if not thousands, of other films that have come before, in stark contrast to the average film, which only has, like, several dozen antecedents. F1 is a tried and true assemblage of complementary parts: an old warrior and a young warrior, gladiatorial contests, mentors, romance, the Big Game; think Bull Durham, for instance. It’s so familiar archetypally that it’s easy to identify as such (as opposed to other films that are equally derivative but draw from more obscure sources), and it’s such a notoriously lavish undertaking that it’s tempting to strike at it for its swaggering confidence and what some would call unearned arrogance. Greek Tragedies are about elevated personages because their fall is greater, you see: we love slaying giants, deservedly or not.
Kosinski’s previous film, Top Gun: Maverick, basically shares a narrative with Star Wars–down to the targeting of exhaust ports, the crowd-pleasing surprise appearance of a comrade-in-arms, the grizzled mentor’s tutelage of an old, lost friend’s son–but it’s fun. It features an aging movie star being a movie star. It centres a charming September/September romance with another movie star. It has all the things people who claim to love movies are looking for in diverting entertainment. F1 similarly doesn’t rewrite the way movies are made, nor does it challenge its audience–but everything it does, it does well and thoughtfully. More, it accomplishes what it sets out to do with flair, even if you could argue, correctly, that it doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before. At a certain point in consuming art, you break through a ceiling to discover that everything owes a debt to something else. Most brilliant pitches I hear from aspiring screenwriters have already been done, usually unbeknownst to them, and done better, usually by some pulp writer from the 1950s. The more you know, the less is original–which doesn’t mean I won’t use this as a cudgel against sloppy films drunk on their own importance: ignoble and aggregate commodities that may as well be the product of generative AI. We all reach a point where we fall into one of two categories, becoming either the sort of person who still takes pleasure from a familiar thing done well, or one of those people who only takes pleasure in pointing out when a thing’s been done before, regardless of how successful it is in and of itself. I used to think the latter was harder than the former and believe this was proof of my seriousness and dedicated expertise. Now I know better. I’m stupid, but I’m teachable.
F1 is about a race car driver with a lot of mileage named Sonny (Brad Pitt), called back into action as an emergency replacement for a Formula One driver by an old friend and rival (Javier Bardem). Sonny fixes flaws in the car designs without any experience as an actual F1 driver, falls in love with beautiful tech boss Kate (Kerry Condon), and takes on the role of mentor to cocky young driver Pearce (Damson Idris). There are training montages, dark teatimes of the soul where an accident or a startling revelation tests the heroes’ mettle, and races that build anticipation for the climactic Grand Prix. The easy thing is to say this is more or less the plot of Top Gun: Maverick again, but you can do better than that, can’t you? It’s also the plot of Hoosiers. And what would be the point of my saying so? F1 is a delight–and crackerjack. Tight as a duck’s ass, in fact, even at 155 minutes. It knows all the old songs and plays them well: the ultimate wedding band. It’s an expensive production, and every penny is up there on the screen. It’s loud and exciting, does hero shots that elicit tingles whether or not you’re into it, and schools the audience in Formula One racing just enough that neophytes can follow the contests and their stakes. The picture respects its audience by respecting its time. I like that it’s not only a finely tuned instrument–built for speed, as it were–but also a delivery system for a hard-bitten/hard-won wisdom rather than some glib platitudes. Sonny is asked twice during the film (both times by minority supporting characters, incidentally), “If it’s not about the money, what is it about?” Because F1 has the courage of its convictions, it doesn’t force Sonny to answer.
I make it a matter of professional pride to see hundreds of movies a year. Would I keep watching and writing about so many if I won the lottery? My answer to that has always been, “Of course.” Why? I dunno. F1 is fantastic, the kind of blockbuster everyone complains isn’t being made anymore because they’re talking about experiences they can never recapture and so have blocked out the ability to enjoy anything that tries to do the same as the things they love. Did F1 make me feel like Star Wars did 48 years ago, when my parents were alive and loved me and it was the first movie I ever saw? Nope. But it’s great, and I’ll see it again with my son this weekend, because you get one shot at this dark fucking life and joy is in short supply. Maybe that’s what it’s about.
