The beginning of summer brings with it Hollywood’s annual summer blockbuster season. This year sees a new twist to the traditional action genre, with F1: The Movie competing alongside new releases in the Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, and Fantastic Four series.
The movie represents Formula One’s latest attempt to win over American audiences and comes with the type of big-name marketing tie-ins that only a major entertainment conglomerate can deploy to drive attendance. But can the product live up to the hype?
Having rewatched the classic 1990 racing movie Days of Thunder days before the F1 premiere, this racing aficionado entered with two related questions: Could the new release, unlike its predecessor 35 years ago, deliver a more coherent storyline rather than merely serving as a slapdash montage of intense racing sequences — and could it hold viewers’ attention for over two and a half hours? By and large, F1 delivered on both counts.
Intense, Colorful Spectacle
To start with the obvious: The movie shows the thrill and spectacle of open-wheel auto racing. Taped during the 2023 Formula One World Championship season, it features cameo appearances by real-life F1 drivers — including seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton, who also served as a producer.
The involvement of all major Formula One teams, coupled with a production budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, yielded the intense effects one might expect. Crews shot on location at historic tracks such as Silverstone, the Hungaroring, and the first-ever Las Vegas Grand Prix. With the film shot in IMAX, moviegoers should seek out that option whenever available, as it helps bring the sensations of Formula One racing alive: the spectacle of the Red Arrows flying over the British Grand Prix, the difficulty braking into the Vale chicane at Silverstone, and the high-speed run up the Kemmel Straight at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.
But while race fans will recognize and enjoy many familiar sights and sounds, F1 does not appeal strictly to die-hards. It utilizes audio from real-life commentators David Croft and Martin Brundle to explain the strategy behind racing — when to pit, how to manage tire life, racing rules and penalties — to the uninitiated, and strikes a good balance between presenting a merely superficial look and delving so far into the weeds as to bore all but the most hardcore fans.
Plot and Drama
As to the plot, the storyline involves the owner of a failing team (Javier Bardem) making a mid-season driver change. In the itinerant Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), owner Ruben Cervantes finds a driver whom Cervantes raced against three decades ago, before Hayes suffered an awful crash that short-circuited a promising Formula One career. Cervantes hopes Hayes can give his team a second chance — and find redemption for himself in the process.
Beyond that simple premise, much of the plot surrounds the exact type of real-life drama that occurs within Formula One teams and races every year. It’s a drama that sees teammates — in this case, Hayes and Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), an up-and-coming driver wary of the journeyman — competing for attention, the choice of the prime racing strategy, and positioning within the team. It’s the tension within the team, where technical engineers like Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) conduct a desperate search for more speed, and drivers and engineers argue over strategy. And ultimately, it’s the drama for teams to attract and retain sponsors, and drivers to keep their rides.
In that sense, the movie accurately captures the intensity of Formula One racing on and off the racetrack. Longtime race fans will note that the movie contains plot twists that echo three separate incidents from the 2020 and 2021 Formula One seasons — one involving Romain Grosjean and the other two featuring F1 movie producer Hamilton.
‘Start Your Engines!‘
That said, the producers do seem to have taken poetic license with several details. For starters, Sonny Hayes may not have been able to get a “super license” to drive a Formula One car to begin with. And without spoiling the plot, the events in the races at the Hungaroring and Monza likely would not have taken place, as racing officials would have intervened.
But F1 provides a generally realistic glimpse into the triumphs and tragedies that lie behind the world’s most popular, if not necessarily its best, open-wheel racing series. Pitt, himself a prominent racing fan, Idris, and Condon excel in their roles, with Condon and Pitt having dynamic on-screen chemistry. Viewers looking to beat the heat this summer could do far worse than to make a pit stop at their nearest cinema to watch F1.
F1: The Movie has a runtime of 2 hours 35 minutes, is rated PG-13 for language, and is in theaters nationwide, including in IMAX, beginning June 27.