Edd Straw was part of a selected audience who were able to watch F1: The Movie ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix. Warning: The following review may contain some spoilers.
To review F1: The Movie requires a Formula 1 journalist to switch between two hats. One, that of a cinema lover, the other of an F1 paddock-dweller. What’s surprising is that the latter is better served than the former.
The first part of the film succeeds impressively. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is introduced elegantly, and he’s soon leaping behind the wheel for a crucial night stint in the Daytona 24 Hours that’s every bit the visceral assault on the senses that the filmmakers promised. They even pull off the implausible F1 comeback of Hayes after 30 years away convincingly enough, within the bounds of the necessary suspension of disbelief required to watch any movie.
More spectacular on-track scenes follow at Silverstone, which are again breathtaking and deliver on the promises of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski. That’s carried into the first race, the British Grand Prix, where the most is made of the filming opportunities with the APX GP cars (F2 machines modified by the Mercedes team) on the grid for the formation lap.
The opportunity to film at multiple grands prix across 2023 and ‘24 is one of the great strengths of F1. Scenes are shot on the actual grid, including a key scene with Pitt and Javier Bardem, who plays APX GP team owner Ruben Cervantes. Combined with the phenomenal camera technology employed, building on that used to shoot Top Gun: Maverick, it delivers on the promise of immersion.
While the APX GP cars are mostly stitched into real racing footage seamlessly to the point where you wonder if the cars really were on the track during the races, there are occasionally problems with the scaling of the cars, leading to a grating mismatch. But those moments are in the minority. F1 has never looked better and the first 20-25 minutes of this two-and-half-hour would-be blockbuster really does work.
What follows doesn’t live up to the strong start. Although the worst cliches of racing movies are avoided, there’s no magical extra throttle travel for when things get serious or nonsensical extra gears for example, the on-track scenes sometimes become too chaotic as the movie progresses.
Combined with the excessively self-conscious amount of explaining the plot – and therefore how F1 works – going on, it at times becomes a clumsy watch. And while you aren’t expecting Shakespeare from what is a big visual impact popcorn movie, the shallow characterisation and lack of connection to the leads or situations makes it difficult to be invested in what’s happening.
It feels like the close collaboration with F1 has cramped the style of the filmmakers somewhat, even though it does allow for some fascinating glimpses of the Williams windtunnel and Mercedes driver-in-loop simulator as well as the trackside filming.
The drama is created with the APX GP team because of the need to avoid turning any of the real teams into the bad guys. That is achieved to limited effect, with the rivalry between team mates Hayes and Joshua Pearce (played by Damson Idris) filling that role unconvincingly before, seemingly as an afterthought, another antagonist reveals themselves late on.
When it comes to the characters, most are two-dimensional and cursed with clunky dialogue, with the accomplished cast given little to work with. What’s more, despite attempts to create broad representation within APX GP, the two female characters on the race team are treated shabbily by the script.
The need to explain arcane details of F1 that become plot points hangs heavily. There’s a huge amount of tyre strategy, one the one hand a positive for authenticity but in a very heavy-handed way, and too often either characters or the commentators, David Croft and Martin Brundle, talking over the on-track sequences. This is the polar opposite of ‘show don’t tell’ filmmaking and is surprising for a movie that stands or falls on its spectacular visuals. What’s more, although there are some big-name cameos, APX GP somehow feels entirely disconnected from the world of F1 that it inhabits.
So is F1: The Movie worth watching for motorsport fans? Absolutely – and if possible you should do so as nature intended in an IMAX cinema rather than streaming it at home. At its best early on, it’s a great watch even if it does lose its way. You really do get to see F1 as you’ve never seen it before even if, visually, many of the later on-track scenes become confused.
The problem is it ticks more boxes for F1 than it might for moviegoers who want a well-told, immersive movie and there are big reservations about whether the storyline, drama and characters really work dramatically. Some will probably find the overblown plot a deal-breaker, but personally that wasn’t an issue because what would you expect from this type of movie?
It’s also inevitable that there are liberties taken with how F1 really works, but this is not, and never tries to be, a documentary. However its qualities as a drama are more concerning than how it portrays F1, with narrative threads pulled at but not committed to leading to you wondering exactly what story is being told.
But you cannot question the technical achievement and must admire the effort made by the film-makers to immerse themselves in F1, even if it feels like the opportunity hasn’t been made the most of.
It will be the cinema-going and streaming audiences who ultimately make the judgement on whether F1: The Movie is a hit or a miss.
F1 the movie is released in Europe on Wednesday June 25 in cinemas. It will be available for streaming on Apple TV+ at a later date.
