By Caleb Kim ’26
With the highly anticipated and rated F1 movie being released recently, the Bell Online visited the theaters for a summer blockbuster! Brad Pitt starring as journeyman driver Sonny Hayes, the film follows a used and reused plot, where Hayes rises from depths of competitive motor racing to the sport’s absolute pinnacle, Formula 1. The story also focuses on the narrative of young driver Joshua Pearce, whose test is to overcome his animosity against Hayes and succeed as a team.
From the practical onset of the movie, the racing sequences carry the entertainment and excitement. Director Joseph Kosinski executes these scenes well as the audio is fine tuned to every detail of the car and the camera displays the action in an authentic way. Strapped to the frame of the cars, the cameras visualize the unfiltered experience of driving the most advanced, complicated motor vehicles in the world. Truly, the visuals are unparalleled. Every one of the racing scenes achieves a different aim, whether it be tension, disappointment, jubilation, or even outright horror. At its best, F1 is a movie, where the only thing the audience feels is their hearts pounding.
Of course, however, all 2.5 hours of runtime aren’t devoted to racing. Dialogue and plot scenes follow a predictable progression, but they still work. By no means are they memorable, but seeing Pitt in his most likeable type of character – the ‘cool guy’ – aided by solid contributions from the veteran cast, including Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon, suffices. It’s a typical zero to hero comeback story. It does just enough and sometimes even more.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an audience score of 97% and critic score of 83%. The racing sequences certainly warrant a 97%, but in the end, the plot scenes don’t play up to that par. For what it’s worth, the zero-to-hero storyline is well-done, but there’s only so much it can achieve. The merit and originality of the plot limit the story’s potential. Thus, in our estimation, the film deserves a rating of 4.5/5 (a happy medium of the two aforementioned scores).
Ultimately, the movie is a mixed bag. The story? Standard. The theme? Quite predictable. The action? The reason you watch the movie. The film is disguised as a theatrical story, but in its true form, it’s just action, action, and more action.