By Mark Fields
Big, Loud, Stupid, Fun, plus Brad Pitt
It’s summer time, so of course, the emphasis on movies coming out of Hollywood is with glossy genre films with big stars and even bigger production values, which we all commonly know as blockbusters. Recent examples include Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning; Ballerina; and the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Into this crowded docket now comes F1® The Movie, a car racing comeback story starring Brad Pitt.
Directed and co-written by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick), F1® The Movie possesses all the elements we long for in a summer blockbuster: a marquee actor playing a lovable rogue, conflict between two central characters, an improbable romance, and tightly-edited action sequences all set to a high-energy musical score. It’s big, loud, stupid, and yes, fun, mostly absorbing in the moment and utterly forgettable ten minutes after it’s over.
The paint-by-numbers script involves the tale of Sonny Hayes, a once-promising Formula 1 race driver lured back into the circuit by his old friend and former competitor, Ruben Cervantes (an affable Javier Bardem) to teach an emerging talent, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). His unconventional approach to racing and his overly-self-assured manner grate on everyone in the team, especially Pearce. But eventually, he overcomes their doubts and becomes the route to fame and glory.
Of course, there are set-backs along the way, which only serve to make Sonny’s path to redemption all the more satisfying. The entirely predictable plot, however, is secondary to the thrilling race sequences. Nearly every moment of this movie is packed with tense, brisk scenes of F1 racing, and pit changes, and practice runs, largely incomprehensible to someone who doesn’t follow the sport but nevertheless captivating.
So confident are the filmmakers in the dynamics of the action scenes that they are accompanied by volumes of racing techno-jargon that the viewer can going partially hear, let alone understand over the roar of the engines and the thrumming pomposity of Hans Zimmer’s score (you could have anticipated that Zimmer scored this movie, couldn’t you?). They literally toss away the dialogue because it’s so unimportant to the success of the movie.
The acting in a movie such as this is also mostly superfluous, but the scenes between old-school charmers Pitt and Bardem are entertaining. Idris holds his own with Pitt, playing a cardboard-cutout character. Sadly, supporting players Kerry Condon, Kim Bodnar, and Tobias Menzies struggle to overcome their unimaginative stock characters.
F1® The Movie meets the expectations threshold for big summer films. It doesn’t set any new standard of quality, but it does the job serviceably. If you are looking for substance at the Cineplex, you’ll just to have to wait until the autumn. Vroom, vroom.
Official Trailer
