Sports dramas often operate within the strict constraints of a binary outcome. The hero or a team either wins or loses. The simplicity is also the genre’s beauty. As Sonny Hayes says in F1, “It’s not about the money.” It is never about the end outcome. It is the “how”, with its interpersonal drama, display of indomitable will, and ample amounts of adrenaline-pumping moments inside the stadium/ring/track, that forms the core appeal of sports dramas. Having said that, it’s not the outcome or even the “how” but the “why” that firmly tethers us to the characters and drama of F1.
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon
An old timer is pulled back into the game for one last shot at glory. He has to work along with an effervescent young rookie, desperate to prove himself, which fills him with doubts and recklessness. A team leader puts the team together to "bet the farm" on that one final game. It's a formula as old as the genre itself. But F1 doesn't aim to reinvent the wheel. It just spins it really fast, which, honestly, is just part of the thrill. As I mentioned earlier, what keeps us hooked is why it's spinning. The film has "why's" of all shapes, sizes, and colours. Javier Bardem's Ruben Cervantes, a former race car driver himself, has to prove that his bottom-of-the-barrel team is worth the board members' money or lose ownership. Kerry Condon’s Kate, the team's technical director, the first woman to hold that position in Formula One, wants to prove to an incredulous world that she's more than just a diversity hire. Damson Idris’ Joshua Pearce, the highly motivated rookie, wants to prove that he is worthy of all the fame, money, and success reserved for the best of the best in the game. Even a pit crew member is fighting insecurities and in-game anxiety to prove to her team she knows what she is doing. Sonny Hayes is the protagonist not because Brad Pitt is playing him or that he is the man behind the wheel but because his purpose is the one we chase throughout the film. Why, three decades after a horrendous accident ripped him apart from the Formula One circuit, is Sonny Hayes back on the track? The question is peppered throughout the film and the answer is even beautifully hinted at when Ruben wonders out loud to a hospitalised Sonny, “Why do we do this? Why not tennis or golf?" F1 isn’t a complex, philosophical dissection of that answer, nor does it go past a surface-level character study on Sonny Hayes. But what it does offer is just the right amount of fresh contours in this oft-beaten track that it feels safe and exciting.
Sonny Hayes is your typical too-cool-to-care, world-weary protagonist. And Brad Pitt plays him in a way that makes it hard to deduce if it is effortless charm or just Pitt not caring enough. Either way, it somehow ends up working in favour of the film. Kerry Condon walks in like a beam of light whenever she enters the frame as Kate McKenna, using a pleasant countenance to paint a character whose dimensions mostly lie in the peripheries, with no immediate purpose to the screenplay. Damson Idris makes you feel like anyone other than him would have made Joshua Pearce harder to like. However, it is Javier Bardem as Ruben Cervantes who deliberately surpasses the demands of the screenplay to add emotional weight to the film. If not for the story itself, Bardem could have made you believe that F1 is a story about Ruben.
Beyond performances and storytelling, the film provides consummate justice to its title in every way except for how a team on the bottom can quickly climb up the board to compete with the heavy-hitters on top. The visuals try to avoid racing film cliches (like a closeup of the wheels or a static shot of cars whizzing by) as much as possible. With a swiveling camera that turns back and forth between the speed-blurred tracks and the tense face of the driver, the film doesn’t rely on choppy editing to maintain momentum. Conversely, even simple conversations are chopped, perhaps to maintain the pacing even off the tracks. Except for Joseph Kosinksi’s signature sterile visuals, F1 largely repackages the charm of old-school high-concept sports drama by simply cutting down the cheese. The visuals might have you believe that F1 is Top Gun: Maverick on wheels but Kosinksi knows better than to imitate an unreachable benchmark. So, he wins you over by going the opposite way. Brad Pitt isn’t going “Listen here kid, let me show you how it's done.” And for that and a bit more, we can be thankful. This isn’t a film about redemption, becoming a family, or other lofty themes. It is about chasing an unquenchable high, and F1 does that with dignity and style.