F1: The Movie

Nearly four decades ago, the late director Tony Scott, star Tom Cruise, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer attempted to re-conjure the magic that made Top Gun such a cultural touchstone with Days of Thunder, a racing movie that followed the same basic structure, but replaced the fighter jets with fast cars. Now, Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski are essentially following the same playbook with Top Gun: Maverick and the recently released F1. The only difference, this time around, is that Cruise didn’t return for the sports drama, perhaps because he has been occupied for the last half-decade by the Mission: Impossible franchise. But this was all for the best, because nobody other than Brad Pitt could’ve played the role of the seasoned drifter Sonny Hayes. It’s an odd observation to make, because Cruise literally played the most famous drifter of them all, Jack Reacher. Twice. But he was famously miscast in those movies. Not because he didn’t fit writer Lee Child’s physical description of the towering Reacher, but because, as an actor, Cruise doesn’t exactly project the going-with-the-flow energy that is required for such a character. He is simply too intense, his persona is too curated, too meticulous to play someone that lives like hobo. There’s a reason why people joke that he’s actually an alien scientologist sent to spy on earthlings. Pitt, on the other hand, has the exact opposite screen presence. He’s a relaxed, relatable, somewhat rudderless.

When you combine two of the most popular entities of the world – Brad Pitt and Formula One racing- in a film, you can expect it be a big blockbuster hit. One of the most popular stars of Hollywood, Pitt has been credited with some of the biggest hits of all time and earned an Oscar award for his performance. The man splashing comes back in F1: The Movie as a Sony Hayes, a rule breaker, a has-been driver who left the circuit years back after a freak accident. When Sony is pulled back into the circuit- this time by an old friend and fellow rider (Javier Bardem in a delightful role) and Sony has to face his demons, move past personal setback, and even befriend a weary rookie driver (Damson Idris) to win F1.

I have this vivid image of the future in my head. It’s a bit like the opening vignettes of Interstellar. People buy tickets and shuffle into a museum. This museum was once an out-of-business IMAX theatre. On its giant screen — a screen that’s alien to an ultra-digitalised planet — rushes of a bygone era flicker to life. There’s a long queue outside a section called “Stardom”. The term is strange and antiquated, like a sound of history that current generations have only heard of. They think it has something to do with space travel; perhaps it does. As the kids take their seats, a curated montage of two ‘old’ titles begins. The crowd goes “ooh” when a dashing chap named Tom Cruise lights up the screen in Top Gun: Maverick; the crowd goes “aah” when a hunky guy named Brad Pitt lights up the screen in F1. The men no longer exist, but these two movies are the closest approximation of a world in which aura mattered. There is polite applause. The guided tour moves on to the next section. Maybe more Jurassic Park than Interstellar.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously directed the Top Gun sequel a few years back, F1: The Movie features a sportsperson (can a Formula 1 driver truly be referred to as a ‘sportsperson’?) returning from retirement in pursuit of glory. While the premise may not seem particularly original, it is the storytelling that sustains this film throughout a significant portion of its 155-minute runtime.

As a follow-up to the 2022 blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick – it only seemed sensible for director Joseph Kosinski to inch towards a racing film. After all, the Tom Cruise-starrer had all the dazzle of a sports or a heist film, more than a war film. The enemy is not named or seen, and the film is shouldered on a breathless sequence of planes flying low through a ravine (to avoid the enemy’s radar) with a stopwatch counting down. It’s such a jaw-droppingly idiot proofed mission, it borders on a parody of a war film – if it wasn’t so technically proficient and slick to look at. It conveys something Kosinski echoes with F1: if you’re looking for meaningful critique of existing power structures – he’s probably not your guy. Kosinski only wants to show you a good time.

Putting ‘blockbuster’ in ‘summer blockbuster’ in the way few films can is F1 — The Movie. This high-octane, classic underdog story, stylishly acted and seamlessly picturised, is just the adrenaline shot that the big screen needed. Dominating cinema space this weekend, big movie comfort food rarely felt as enticing as F1 which may run on familiar fuel but delivers huge dollops of entertainment. Powering this rise-against-all-odds story is Brad Pitt. At 61, Pitt fires on all cylinders, showing us yet again why he and Tom Cruise, a year older than him, are indisputably the last great movie stars. That F1 is directed by Joseph Kosinki, the man who helmed Cruise’s 2022 summer blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick — the film that brought theatres back into business globally after the pandemic — is only one of the many commonalties that their careers have shared. In the late 2010s, Kosinski was developing a racing film with both Pitt and Cruise set to star — and do their own driving. Earlier this week, Cruise landed up at the London premiere of F1 to support his Interview with the Vampire co-star. Needless to say, in its thrills and chills and its need-for-speed DNA, the shadow of Cruise looms large over F1.

The young man in the row behind me in the 7am screening of F1 was having something like a religious experience. I could sense his enjoyment throughout, but in the film’s final stretch, he started verbalizing it. “Duh-duh-duh,” he intoned in imitation of the score, “Hans Zimmer is peaking.” “That was close,” when Brad Pitt’s race car driver took a sharp corner. And when Pitt pulled away from the pack, his approving words were, simply: “He’s flying.” I thought of shushing him, but decided to hold my peace. I hate when people talk at the movies. But I love it when someone talks to a movie. With his incredibly successful 2022 Top Gun sequel, Joseph Kosinski offered a new kind of Hollywood tentpole. Maverick didn’t redraw, or even test, the boundaries of the form. What Kosinkski did manage, however, was to find and sustain a level of smooth, sleek performance denied to other films on this scale. That film was a machine in the best sense: all clean lines and balance and zero waste. Other blockbusters looked overstuffed and effortful in comparison.