F1: A Fun, Formulaic Ride
Joseph Kosinski's Brad Pitt vehicle makes it to the finish line despite bumps and scrapes
Nothing is tougher to dramatise than sport. First of all, why would you? It is inherently dramatic, with all the natural ebbs and flows of a narrative, constantly in conversation with its audience through commentary which, if removed, would still leave you with diegetic sound, and nothing could make a broadcast better. Sport is also notoriously difficult to turn into a feature film, whose format of repeated takes and a vast array of shot-taking possibilities is fundamentally different from the (largely) fixed camera setups most broadcasts rely on. Then there are the variables of action and counteraction, which explains why the quality of cricket films in a country like India, cricket- and movie-mad, is so questionable: the likes of Victory, Patiala House, M.S. Dhoni the Untold Story (which confuses VFX superimposition for scene composition), and 83 are seared into my memory as illustrations of just how mangled sport becomes in the hands of feature filmmakers. Of course, there is Lagaan, but I’ve not managed to watch it from start to finish yet and it is, at its crux, a story of overcoming colonial oppression through cricket: cinematographer Anil Mehta once spoke about approaching the film as drama and not sport, which placed him at odds with actor-producer Aamir Khan. Mehta won that argument, and Lagaan’s cricket scenes are thus the kind one still remembers a quarter of a century later.
In F1 (also released as F1 the Movie for the thick ones among us), filmmaker Joseph Kosinski hedges his bets carefully, weighing the sport against the dramatic arc of his narrative. In the event, the lack of heft in the latter realm benefits the former’s on-ground visibility. It isn’t a major sacrifice, just an illustration of Kosinski’s ability to switch things around. He had a similar task in his previous feature – Top Gun: Maverick – but making a semi-propaganda film for the United States Navy is slightly different from soothing the presumably ruffled feathers of the FIA who, having now viewed the film they would likely have been reluctant to grant all kinds of access to, can only be happy. Maverick and F1 are similar films featuring ageing Hollywood icons (Brad Pitt takes the helmet from Tom Cruise), have plotlines involving benevolent old friends coming to the rescue (Javier Bardem fills in for the late Val Kilmer), star confident women the protagonists are taken by (Out goes Jennifer Connolly, in comes Kerry Condon), and have young tykes for teammates the veteran hero must jostle with (Damson Idris, playing JP, combines the duties handled by Miles Teller and Glen Powell). By not shying away from the prattle about how similar F1 is to Maverick, which has been the central thrust of the sceptics since the former commenced production, Kosinski and his backers have allowed themselves to benefit from the spectacle of Maverick while still purporting to offer something new (since both Grand Prix and Rush are now some way in the past).
Pitt headlines F1, playing once-rising, now-restive driver Sonny Hayes, the kind of greying, grizzled middle-aged man who fittingly walks out to take over his task at Daytona to the strains of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”. He doesn’t care for the prize unless it can be encashed. He lives in a van and races for the fun of it, though the laidback life has its own nightmares: recurring ones of a car going off-track in the season of 1994 and bursting into flames – Hayes was lucky to survive that crash, but he never raced Formula One again. Three decades on, his former partner and dear friend Ruben (Bardem), who has traded the steering wheel of a Formula One car for that of a Formula One team, offers him a place in the driver’s seat again. Ruben is desperate to finish the season, which has been a miserable one for his team, and is relying on his old friend to help him out. It is very, very familiar, but then F1 never promised a new story, just new pyrotechnics, which it delivers in spades. Its strengths lie very much in doing just what is expected of it, and doing it well. Kosinski capitalises on the unprecedented access offered to him by the FIA and the teams to deliver the lives of races themselves, rather than spending too much time on the drivers. It helps that the helmets obscure the faces of the drivers, so neither Pitt nor Idris have to gun a peculiar car around a track at dangerous speeds. They leave that to experts under stunt coordinator Gary Powell, and Kosinski, working in concert with DP Claudio Miranda and editor Stephen Mirrione, produces some breath-taking footage which is equal parts epic and intimate, often depicting cars locked in fighter aircraft-esque combat (Hayes demands a car built for combat quite literally, and the team he races for is called Apex. On the nose much?) and then cutting to a cockpit-view of the track before doing a neat hundred-and-eighty degree to focus on Pitt/Idris. In doing so, Kosinski cleverly sidesteps any comparisons that could be drawn between his film and the races: he prioritises the drama of cinema even during the Grands Prix (I felt like I was playing an iteration of the video game, what with the constant radio chatter), darting from race-to-face with fleet-footedness that satisfies both a Formula One nut and a movie bolt.
Which isn’t to say the film isn’t flawed, of course: it blatantly violates the rules of the sport, which even an absolute headcase like yours truly could catch, and that is a problem solely because it is a sports film made with a significant level of access and a Formula One driver – Lewis Hamilton – on board as a producer. The rule-breaking also makes the barebones drama of the movie repetitive to the point that the already low stakes become negligible. It doesn’t make for compelling viewing no matter which side of the aisle you happen to be sitting on. The broader writing is also not much to write home about (why must every man and woman interaction have to end in sex, especially when the latter – Condon – is supposed to be a professional force to reckon with?) but it wisely jettisons schmaltziness: Pitt’s legacy as an actor is not the same as Cruise’s, and Hayes is not a character he is known for. Instead of trying to generate an aura around Hayes, screenwriter Ehren Kruger and Kosinski use Pitt’s reticent charisma to great effect, such that one could almost position this performance as part of a trifecta involving the actor’s turns in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Babylon. The breeziness about Hayes lets the film coast along, and Pitt leaves the lifting to Condon, who shines in a sharp turn as the rare woman professional in a Formula One team.
The other noticeable performance comes from Idris, who plays the up-and-coming JP with a brashness that is annoying yet endearing: one feels for the lad who, if his team were to succeed, would end up being upstaged by a relic from thirty years ago. It is an undemanding performance, certainly, but Idris makes sure to have his moment, particularly in a scene when Pitt’s character is laying into him and he’s busy posing for the press.
F1 is consistently enjoyable, not least for the immersion afforded to those catching it in IMAX (though I have a feeling the film will work just as well on standard screens) and because, for the longest time, such a film has eluded the audience. It also doesn’t attempt to sermonise or paint in over-saturated tones the sort of feeling one is expected to derive from it: park your butt in the seat and enjoy the ride!
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