F1 Is Really About Brad Pitt’s Strengths and Limitations as a Movie Star

F1 is the tale of two drivers who become reluctant colleagues when one is hired halfway through the Formula One season in a last-ditch effort to save a floundering Apex team. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is a veteran who overlapped with F1 legend Ayrton Senna, while rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) came up in an increasingly youthful new era, in which prospects log hours in simulators. They’re representative of two generations of the sport, but for most of the movie, they’re portrayed more like the Goofus and Gallant of authentic racing. Joshua wears trendy clothes and has a sleek condo in the city, while Sonny, who doesn’t care about money, lives out of a camper van. Joshua busies himself with VO2-max tests and reaction training machines, while Sonny prefers to run outside with the members of the pit crew he’s befriended and to work on his reflexes by bouncing balls against a wall. But when Joshua frets over what people are saying about him online and about showing his face at sponsor events, Sonny finally feels obliged to speak up. None of that stuff matters, he says — the only thing that’s important is the driving.

In the larger context of the movie, which was directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay written by Ehren Kruger, this is almost a joke. The official title is technically F1®: The Movie, an ungainly, trademarked reminder of both the brand the film was made in conjunction with, and the fact that that brand is so big that this $200-300 million Hollywood production is a blip in comparison. Every surface of its on-screen world, which looks as crisp and remote as a near future sci-fi setting, is covered with logos and ads from companies vying for audience eyeballs and hoping to benefit from some reflected cachet. All of this stuff matters very much, even if you understand that Sonny could just as easily be talking about making movies. Like Top Gun: Maverick, another recent Kosinski/Kruger collaboration, F1 is a treatise about its star in the form of a drama about going really fast. The difference is just that Pitt isn’t as self-mythologizing or as strange a figure as Tom Cruise, a man who will either die in pursuit of increasingly spectacular stunts or figure out a way to live forever.

F1 is, instead, about Pitt as a movie star in the old school, just like his character — a ronin representing purity in a compromised landscape. The funny thing about Sonny being presented as a washed-up loser with a stripped down life is that he nevertheless looks like he just walked off a magazine shoot, denim shirt half unbuttoned to show off his bohemian necklaces, sleeves rolled up to showcase his tattoos, aviators on in the late afternoon sunlight. He’s an emblem of classic Americana on Formula One’s extremely international stage, and the film can only pretend that everyone — including Apex team tech director Kate (Kerry Condon), team principal Kaspar (Kim Bodnia), and owner and old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) — doubts him for a second before they, and the crowds, fall all over him. Pitt is way too old for the part, even if he’s playing a decade younger, but rather than glaze over his age, F1 positions it as an asset. While Idris is downright dewy with youth, Pitt is admiringly depicted as having developed a patina, his chest firm but the skin just a touch leathery, his face still beautiful, but his eyes crinkled at the edges. The camera loves him, and he knows how to return the favor with a glance up from under his eyelashes or a megawatt grunt. But Pitt has also always been a little aloof, capable of enormous charm but always keeping aspects of himself in reserve — which is why his unrufflable cool guys have always been better with a foil.

Idris, while fine, and fun when in the company of Sarah Niles as his protective mother, isn’t that. This is Pitt’s movie, and like its star, it never opens itself up enough to truly take off. The racing sequences are good, sometimes even great, with footage shot during actual Grands Prix and overlaid with chatter from coverage commentators to explain the strategies and positions of the Apex drivers during each of their nine remaining races. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda has cameras up in the actors’ faces, as well as ones showing their points of view, and ones that swivel from the dash to the driver’s seat. F1 gives you a sense of what it’s like to be in a car rounding the track at an incredible speed, and what it’s like to be watching along on television or in person from on high as vehicles jockey for position. It does a more than capable job of that, while never providing the emotional traction its talk of the ecstatic demands. Sonny says that what he’s chasing in all those races is the moment when he reaches a flow state, a place where the world disappears, but F1 never convinces you that is possible. The world, with all its messy commercial demands, is always present, and ultimately, F1 is just another product of those pressures — nothing more.

Sign up for The Critics

A weekly dispatch on the cultural discourse, for subscribers only.

Become a Subscriber

Already a subscriber? Sign in

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.