F1 and the Fast Lane to Nowhere

I’m not going to lie, when I first heard about F1 The Movie, I had absolutely no interest in it. Auto racing has never appealed to me, so the idea of a film based on Formula One sounded like a total snoozefest. But then something unexpected happened. When the first trailer came out, I checked it out on a whim, and to my surprise, I liked it. I began to think this movie might actually be pretty good, so I decided to give it a shot. I bought a ticket for opening day as soon as I got the chance, and I walked into the theater hoping for the best.

F1 The Movie was directed by Joseph Kosinski, and it stars Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, and Javier Bardem. In the film, Sonny Hayes is an aging race car driver whose time in the spotlight was cut short by injuries. It looked like his career would forever be a tale of unrealized potential, but now, thirty years later, he’s getting a shot at redemption.

An old friend named Ruben invites Sonny to join his struggling Formula One team to keep them from folding, and the man quickly accepts. He soon finds himself driving alongside a hotshot rookie with tons of talent but very little experience, and if they want to succeed, they have to learn to put aside their egos and work together for the good of the team.

If you just want to see a bunch of cool racing action, I think you’re going to have a ball with F1 The Movie. Director Joseph Kosinski captures all the drama and suspense of a Formula One race–including the high-stakes pressure of the pit stops and the nail-bitingly tense positional battles these athletes engage in–and there are even a number of times when he makes you feel like you’re actually in the driver’s seat.

It’s basically a dream come true for racing fans, but if you’re like me, you need more than just a shot of automotive adrenaline. Like I said before, racing isn’t my thing, and to be frank, I’m not much of a car guy in general. My car gets me from point A to point B safely and without using an obscene amount of gas, and that’s all I really care about. I needed these Formula One races to be grounded in an engaging story off the track (much like the boxing in Raging Bull and the wrestling in The Iron Claw) or at least some interesting characters, but unfortunately, I got neither of those.

The vast majority of F1 The Movie takes place on the raceway, and when the characters aren’t driving crazy cars at crazy speeds, they’re almost always discussing their strategy for the next event. You never get a sense of who these people are outside the Formula One world, so for a non-racing fan like me, there’s simply nothing interesting about them. Anything truly human in Sonny and his crew is swallowed up by their chosen profession and rendered dull and ineffective, so no matter how much I wanted to root for them, I just couldn’t bring myself to care enough.

To make matters worse, the few times this film tries to flesh Sonny out beyond his work, he’s usually engaging in an eye-roll-inducingly stereotypical Hollywood romance with his team’s technical director. The woman supposedly doesn’t date teammates, but of course she makes an exception for Sonny. You know, because you can’t have a Hollywood movie without two characters falling head over heels for each other the first time they have a real conversation.

That relationship mercifully takes some of the focus off Sonny’s racing career and adds at least a tiny bit of depth to the character, but it doesn’t actually make F1 The Movie any better. If anything, it makes the film worse because it’s such a missed opportunity. The filmmakers could’ve had Sonny do anything in his precious few moments of screen time off the track, and they chose to take the most unimaginative route possible.

All that being said, I suggest you take my thoughts on F1 The Movie with a grain of salt. I know I’m in the minority here, and I’m not just talking about the film’s 83% critic score and 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing). Unlike me, most people have at least a passing interest in cars, so you’ll probably have a different reaction to this movie than I did.

Sure, the thin lead character and flimsy plot will most likely keep it from breaking into your best-of-the-year list, but the gripping automotive action and the tense on-track drama will probably make this a fun experience for the majority of viewers. Just know that it all depends on what you’re looking for, so if you’re like me and you need an engaging story beyond the track, you should probably give this film a pass.