A washed-up veteran must come out of retirement and return to the place where he had purpose, to serve as a mentor and save a team from ruin, while making peace with a tragedy from the past (and all of this, told through spectacular cinematography for the grand IMAX format). This is the premise of F1: The Movie (USA, 2025), but no one could blame you for also thinking of Top Gun: Maverick (USA, 2022).
Don’t be surprised, as both are works of the creative duo Joseph Kosinski in the director’s chair and Ehren Kruger on the script (with Christopher McQuarrie also contributing to the script for the latter). This already tells us the first thing we need to know about this movie starring Brad Pitt: there’s nothing new under the sun or, at least, the aspirations here are not leaning towards narrative originality.
What’s it about?
In F1, Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a Formula 1 driver who was a young promise in the 90s but had to retire due to a tragedy on the track. Decades later, living adrift, in debt, working odd jobs and racing in other motorsport categories like NASCAR, Sonny is contacted by his old friend and partner, Rubén Cervantes (Javier Bardem).
Rubén has invested in a Formula 1 team, APXGP, but they are in trouble: they haven’t won a single race, and if they don’t manage to climb in the standings, he’ll have to sell the team. With his experience, Sonny’s job will be to guide the young lead driver, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and the engineering team to improve the cars and, maybe, manage to win one race.
Like Maverick, the story of F1: The Movie is one of redemption, about a forgotten veteran who gets a chance to prove himself, make peace with the past, and achieve glory. At the same time, the experience and values of “the old times” contrast negatively with those of the rookie driver, initially more focused on his personal brand and enjoying both the glamour and prestige of car racing.
F1 is more style than substance
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these redemption stories and generational clashes: they may be overdone, but there’s certainly a reason they are popular and we keep coming back to them again and again over the years.
The problem is that Kosinski and Kruger settle for clichés: a joke about the veteran’s age here, tension about the generational differences there, and that’s it. We could replace Pitt and Idris with Tom Cruise and Miles Teller, the cars with airplanes, and we’d have the same movie, complete with the characters’ deep daddy issues.
Therefore, the big promise of F1 lies in the form, in the audiovisual spectacle, filmed “for” IMAX (and note, not “with” IMAX cameras, but with “certified” cameras for the format, as clarified by the company’s own website).
It should be said that, initially, the promise is fulfilled with flying colors. The movie does more than bring the audience closer to the experience of being a Formula 1 driver. The cameras, strategically mounted on the cars to show both the race on the track and the drivers in the cockpit, bring us even closer to the experience and make it very thrilling. We see the tires skimming the gravel, the smoke on the actors’ faces, and even the pimples on their noses. Just like with the planes in Maverick, Pitt and Idris learned how to drive the cars to provide that realistic feeling.
However, and given that car racing is more “common” than flying fighter jets, the experience can become repetitive. Kosinski’s direction is very didactic in explaining the situations of the drivers on the track. Even for those with little to no interest in the sport (like this writer), he does an extraordinary job of exposing the strategy between drivers and mechanics to climb positions in a race.
But like a real F1 race, the excitement can give way to the boredom and tedium of watching a car make 50 laps around the same circuit. With a runtime that exceeds Top Gun: Maverick‘s for almost half an hour, this movie ends up becoming a long chain of overly similar action scenes, with interludes of product placement and two men measuring their egos.
It would be a little more interesting if Brad Pitt didn’t play the same lovable asshole he’s been playing in movies for at least a decade, but no. F1 is thrilling at its best moments, but beneath its flashy coat of paint, it’s a movie we’ve seen a thousand times before – and better.
F1: The Movie premieres in theaters worldwide on June 27, get your tickets now.
