F1 The Movie – Film Review
Reviewed by Branden Zavaleta on the 24 June 2025
Universal Pictures Australia and Warner Bros. present a film by Joseph Kosinski
Screenplay by Ehren Kruger
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Joseph Kosinski, Lewis Hamilton, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner, and Chad Oman
Starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, and Javier Bardem
Cinematography Claudio Miranda
Edited by Stephen Mirrione
Music by Hans Zimmer
Rating: TBA
Running Time: 156 minutes
Release Date: the 26th of June 2025
‘Car crashes are part of a long tradition of American optimism’, Dellilo says in White Noise, that they’re ‘positive events, full of the old ‘can-do’ spirit. Each car crash is meant to be better than the last’.
It’s true in F1 The Movie too, which stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, an ex-F1 driver who fell from grace after a dramatic crash. Now, down on his luck–living in a van and winning the Daytona 500 for a fistful of dollars–he’s given another shot at the gold, to “be the absolute best”, by his friend Ruben (Javier Bardem).
F1 is a western, and Brad Pitt is the cowboy who saunters into town with his rough-and-tumble ways to teach Ruben’s failing Formula 1 team how to race combat. He’s not afraid to test the rules of the sport, using minor crashes and the safety car to help his teammate (Damson Idris) move up the ranks. He’s a gunslinger and he takes risks, much to the dismay of his by-the-book team. It’s a classic tale, and Sonny even has his version of the old western school marm to romance in Kerry Condon’s genius technical director, Kate.
As far as the technical feats go, F1 plays it close to realism. They’ve taken out penalties, for clarity, and there are a few magic moments you wouldn’t see in a real Grand Prix (but you’d hope to). Otherwise, it’s even a little too technical. They explain sector colours, DRS, slipstreams, and various logistical rules. When it does, it’s like a basic education in Formula 1, and an advertisement. Not exactly unwelcome, but it won’t help its shelf life. After all, the real pleasures of the film are the speed, power, and dramatic crashes.
The cameos are more tasteful. It’s stuffed with Formula 1 celebrities and references–even Lewis Hamilton’s bulldog, Roscoe, shows up–but they’re set dressing, hanging out in the background to ground Sonny’s journey in the real racing world. It’s also funny to think that producer Hamilton likely paid his way into the final showdown, when it would be Verstappen in reality.
There are a couple things like this that make you feel the commercial reality of the film, like the all-too-obvious product placement of Ninja blenders, or the exhausted laughs that Pitt gives at times. A warmer, filmic look would’ve been more welcome than the greys it lives in.
Still, there’s no going past its racing scenes. Kosinski does Tony Scott again with his homage to Days of Thunder (1990) in the Daytona 500 opening. Sparks and fireworks fly as Sonny weaves through the chaos. It’s so good you wonder if Kosinski wanted to do NASCAR but got paid to do Formula 1– which he then turned into a combat sport like NASCAR anyway.
Formula 1 is a harder sport to photograph too. Unlike NASCAR, there’s no second seat for a camera; the angles are limited. They must rely on many of the same shots that real F1 races use–nose, POV, overhead, etc. It’s not always clear exactly what’s going on, but there are shots that will make you gasp. You wonder how they managed some of the effects–did they stage real races for this or use VFX? And they save the best for last, with a really great shot that captures what it must be like to be really great, the absolute best, at F1.
Summary: Kosinski’s F1 Is Formula 1 Gunslinging, and loaded with speed, power, and dramatic crashes.
4
Exciting
About the Author
Branden Zavaleta Based in Perth, Branden writes on the arts for a handful of Australian outlets. He's also a street & creative portrait photographer, who's work can be found @brandenzp on Instagram.
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