Film Review: F1

4 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | July 5, 2025

With an old-fashioned but satisfying plotline, dazzling modern camerawork, and a movie star that literally lights up the screen, the new drama F1 is sometimes so realistic you may find yourself smelling oil, grease, or ethanol and swearing it’s coming from the theater.

The f-word here is first and foremost for Formula 1 Racing (a multi-billion-dollar international competition of epic fast cars), but it could also be for fantasy, fame, or fandom, as all are pre-built into this 2 hour 36 minute hype-promo for a professional sport.

For those who “wrench,” the lore of Formula 1 begins with the early European Grand Prix races of the 1930s, the founding of the organization in 1950, and then the motorized advance from inline fours, eights, and V12s to the contemporary hybrid engines combining turbocharging with energy recovery systems and booster rockets. This cool tech-talk and unrelenting pursuit of speed are woven throughout the script, based on a story by Ehren Kruger.

But what elevates F1 into a popcorn experience worth taking in on the big screen is less mechanical and more human, as actor Brad Pitt carries the film with a turn that reminds you of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, or James Dean, if he’d lived to play a middle-aged loner. At age 61, Pitt seems to have found a new effervescence as a performer, with a fearlessness and control of character work that combines wit, charm, hyper-masculinity, and sex appeal into something almost relatable. The actors all trained extensively to simulate the raw dynamics of the cockpits.

The plot itself is a hero’s journey you’ll find familiar. Pitt’s central character of Sonny Hayes is a driver seemingly at the end of his career, hindered by injury, but still aching to “fly” and addicted to racing forever. When he’s recruited as a last resort to help a failing F1 team compete, Hayes has to prove he still has what it takes. And only mechanical troubles, accidents, meddling investors, or fate itself can stand in his way.

The screenplay is almost classically simple and could fit in a cup holder, but the arcs of success and failure are still there, interwoven with intense racing montages the likes of which you’ve probably never seen (and a cast that looks like a Benetton ad).

Sure, there are major subplots involving a rivalry between the “aging” Hayes and the arrogant hot-shot young gun on his team (actor Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce, a modern social media star who trains for F1 like a video game), or a workplace romance with the attractive chief engineer (played with surprising nuance by actress Kerry Condon), or finally the team’s owner struggling to pay the bills and establish his own racing legacy (Javier Bardem is a nicely cast role). F1 succeeds in spite of an indulgent running time that includes all these side tracks, mainly because Pitt wills it to.

It all felt pretty exciting to me, most of the time, and made me nostalgic for the age of movie stars. With big IMAX cinematography from Oscar winner Claudio Miranda, a score by legend Hans Zimmer, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer behind it, F1 was probably always bound to succeed.

For the most part, director and co-writer Joseph Kosinski keeps the wheels on nicely, even as the audience may sometimes ask of the ending, “Are we there yet?”