The director and creative team behind Top Gun: Maverick have reunited to bring you… Top Gun: Maverick again, but with race cars instead of F/A-18s. Not that the formula reuse is a bad thing—on the contrary, it works exceptionally well in F1’s racing milieu. But screenwriter Ehren Kruger matches both films almost beat for beat, and it’s rather hard to avoid noticing. Again, we find an older pro taking a young upstart under his wing, having been brought onto a team by an old friend. More plot points will seem familiar by the time it’s over, but F1 has a terrific likability to it that papers over the fact that this is a near-carbon copy.
Brad Pitt takes the elder statesman role that probably would have gone to his Spy Game co-star Robert Redford in another lifetime. Truth be told, there are portions of F1 where you can see the Redford side of Pitt that came out during Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. With his weathered quint and posture expressing all the unspoken history of his character, Pitt lends his best “aw, shucks” personality to Sonny Hayes, an F1 driver sidelined three decades prior due to a grievous racetrack incident. Kruger doesn’t give us this information right away; he lets us earn it, keeping us on the hook and leading us gently into this new chance at a title.
Pitt’s Sonny is a whirlwind of carefully curated chaos (forgive the alliteration), sporting an impish grin while laying his plans with shrewd confidence. He’s not some glory boy on a bent to show the world he’s a brash, devil-may-care hot-rodder; he cares about winning more than anything that comes with it. The trophies, the limelight, the popularity—it’s all noise to him. The act of winning—the preparation, the strategy, the loopholes, the execution, and the ethereal feeling of everything going right—that is what drives him more than fortune and fame.
In this, Pitt carries Sonny with swagger, but not one of superiority or braggadocio; he is composed of weary experience tinted with “this might end tomorrow, so I’m gonna enjoy the hell out of it.” His interactions with his new racing team—from novice tire gunner Jodie (Callie Cooke) to the smart and capable technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon)—are fueled by generous know-how and patience… until teammate and hotshot rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) starts showing him why he—Joshua—has never finished a race.
Joshua, who carries himself like a boy band popstar instead of a competition driver, is too caught up in the glamorous trappings of the lifestyle. Contrary to Sonny, his swagger is more of a showman, unearned but eager. He’s competent, but he hasn’t figured out how to win, having lost the first half of the racing season, endangering the team and team owner Ruben’s (Javier Bardem) employment. As a last-ditch Hail Mary, Ruben’s brought Sonny in for the last half of the season, setting the stage for youthful cockiness and time-worn experience to clash and explode.
Kruger’s script is patterned closely upon his co-written screenplay for Top Gun: Maverick, flying in all the requisite old guy/new guy banter and conflicts. The insults and bits of wisdom—both of which will get turned on their heads when repeated with new meaning and perspective later in the film—are exactly what you’d expect. While these garner laughs and the heart-touching moments Kruger and director Joseph Kosinski hope to get, it feels… done. There’s no hiding that this is a rinse-and-repeat job (right down to the thing where someone’s dismissed from the team, only to resurface at a pivotal moment), albeit a very entertaining rinse-and-repeat job.
Once again, Kosinski puts the audience right into the action along with the actors, who seem to be doing a lot of their own driving. As displayed in IMAX, Claudio Miranda’s photography jams us right on the steering column and dazzles us with the same bravura seen in Top Gun: Maverick. We are there with Sonny and Joshua, holding on for dear life as we soar through each straightaway and careen into sharp turns and corners. If you ever went to Chuck E. Cheese competitor Showbiz in the ‘80s, do you remember that little room where they had that racing film they projected on that half-shell screen, and you could sit right in front and feel like you were in it? F1 is basically that, but on steroids.
This movie is sheer muscle, unleashed on screens that could only hope to contain the scope, grandeur, and adrenaline of its subject matter. The combination of Brad Pitt’s congenial-yet-pointed personality, Damson Idris’ celebrity sheen, and the relentless race sequences absolutely rocks. Even though the screenplay makes its memories upon a previously used skeleton, there’s smashing new flesh and blood covering it. Joseph Kosinski has made F1 a full-on ride, complete with ascents, descents, lulls, and out-and-out speed. Thankfully, we’re given time between races to regain our equilibrium and get in tune with the story again, giving each new race more involving subtext, humor, and sheer excitement.
