Patrick RoyThere’s something almost poetic about F1’s opening shots: sleek machines gliding over sunlit asphalt, engines howling like mythic beasts, and Brad Pitt—weathered but unbothered—emerging from the haze in double denim like a cowboy reborn for the circuit. The problem is, the poetry ends there.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski with all the polish you’d expect from the man behind Top Gun: Maverick, F1 is a film engineered for excitement. It’s fast, it’s loud, and it has just enough emotional backstory to pretend it’s about something more than winning races. But beneath the gleaming surface, there’s a void the film never dares to fill.
Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a former Formula One prodigy who crashed out of stardom in the ‘90s and now floats through life like a ghost in a camper van. A has-been with nothing to lose, Sonny is recruited back into the sport by his old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) to rescue a failing team from irrelevance. This setup promises tension, vulnerability, maybe even redemption. But the version of Sonny we meet is curiously complete: confident, witty, insightful, emotionally stable, and apparently still capable of outdriving men half his age. He doesn’t have demons; he has card tricks.
This is where F1 stumbles hardest. Like its hero, the film is so eager to look good that it forgets to be human. It races past grief, trauma, or doubt, offering instead an idealized fantasy where nothing too dark ever lingers and no real danger ever takes root. Kosinski shows us incredible things—real cars on real tracks, filmed with immersive, kinetic clarity—but never lets us feel what’s at stake. No one truly fails. No one bleeds. And the story’s most pressing question seems to be whether Sonny will wink at his team or flash a grin instead.
The cast does their best with what they’re given. Damson Idris brings charm and edge as the rookie Joshua Pearce, and Kerry Condon radiates intelligence and warmth as Kate, the team’s tech director. But these performances operate like decals on a race car—appealing from a distance, not built for close inspection. Dialogue clunks, exposition thuds, and every moment of tension is undercut by a voiceover reminding us what’s already obvious: “He’s in last place.” Yes, we noticed.
More troubling is the film’s almost reverent attitude toward Formula One itself. With the sport’s full backing and Lewis Hamilton onboard as a producer, F1 becomes less a narrative and more a glossy promotional reel. Every track is pristine. Every rival driver is noble. There’s no corruption, no exploitation, no egos worth challenging—just a global tour of beautifully branded set pieces where the only thing missing is genuine conflict.
In a strange way, F1 mirrors the experience of watching an actual race: hypnotic at first, then repetitive, and ultimately detached. There’s spectacle, yes. There’s speed. But without stakes, without risk, it all starts to feel like watching someone else play a video game with the difficulty set to “safe.”
What F1 needed wasn’t another pit stop or a better playlist (though Zimmer’s synth score hits all the expected notes). It needed a sense that something could go wrong. That Sonny might fail. That his past actually wounded him. Instead, we’re left with a film that idolizes movement but forgets why we move.
By the end, you may find yourself admiring the craft but wondering why you don’t feel more. Maybe F1 is like the cars it fetishizes: sleek, loud, efficient—and completely hollow when the engine’s off.
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