When you keep it simple, more is actually WAY more…

F1: The Movie will never be mistaken for high art, but it is popcorn cinema that is executed on an immaculate level as we get drawn into a very basic but incredibly compelling and well-crafted sports movie.

Dubbed “the greatest that never was,” Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was FORMULA 1’s most promising Phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling FORMULA 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to FORMULA 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team’s hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in FORMULA 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition—and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.

F1: The Movie is basically the equivalent of being able to sing all your favourite songs without needing the teleprompter.  It’s hardly reinventing anything but it’s a master class in execution with its visceral driving action and leading man swagger that makes this feel like a really big and bold piece of popcorn driven cinematic excellence.

Director Joseph Kosinski; who co-wrote the film with Ehran Kruger trades in the supersonic jets of Top Gun: Maverick with performance racing automobiles that would actively try and fly if it was allowed by the rules.  The movie is unabashedly big, bold and loud making the spectacle of racing a character unto itself.  Kosinski doesn’t let up and the movie races down the track from beginning to end and considering that this has a healthy 155 min run time, that’s no easy feat.

It leans on the sports movie formula pretty heavily but it does so perfectly because one minute we are on the edge of our seat with the race and in another we are engrossed by this story of the roguish veteran of the sport trying to import knowledge on a hot shot rookie in order to save both of their jobs. It’s almost ironic and even Meta that a film about Formula 1 follows the formula of a successful sports movie to a tee.  With all due respect to hall of fame WWE superstar Bret “The Hitman” Hart, this film is truly the excellence of execution and that all comes through with Cracker Jack direction and a leading man who knows how to come across like a superstar.

You’ve gotta believe that Brad Pitt was trying to channel is inner Steve McQueen on this one….but that’s exactly what the movie calls for.  As Sonny Hayes, Pitt channels the swagger of someone who had the world at his fingertips only to see it all slip away and his personal journey isn’t about proving something to the rest of the world but rather to himself so he knows that he can still climb any mountain that he sets his mind too.  While Tom Cruise unquestionably has earned the right to be one of the last genuine movie stars standing, you could argue that Pitt isn’t that far behind him managing to carry things like this on his gruff everyman charm that translates on such a universal level.  If you don’t want to sleep with him, you want to hang out and watch the game with him.

Damson Idris as young hotshot Joshua Pearce is a revelation as he manages to go toe to toe with Pitt and commands the screen just as well as our grizzled hero.  Javier Bardem is fun as his friend and team runner while Kerry Condon matches up with Pitt not only for romantic chemistry but as the intelligent self-assured woman who is the first to be designing an F1 Formula racer and is wary of Pitt and his arrogant ways that could screw it all up.

Ultimately, F1: The Movie encapsulates what makes the perfect sports movie.  It’s about the marriage of the old school and the new in the ultra-competitive world of high performance auto racing, which isn’t all that dissimilar to the nature of big budget filmmaking.  You don’t have to reinvent anything, you just have to put the time and the effort into making something that achieves everything that it needs to do.  At the end of the day, that’s how you win.  F1: The Movie is going to earning the checkered flag for weeks this summer.

It was shot for IMAX, see it in IMAX.  It’ll play well everywhere but this is yet another clear cut example of why we go to the movies in the first place, it’s an experience that deserves to be appreciated the best way it possible can.