Format: Streaming video from Apple TV on rockin’ flatscreen.
There is a huge problem at the heart of F1 (sometimes called F1: The Movie). The problem is that because we know we are watching a movie, the endgame is played out for us once we know the premise of the film. Once you know what the plot is, the ending, while not guaranteed, is shuttled into a couple of possibilities with slight variation. It makes about 90 minutes or so of the film not meaningless, but having nothing really at stake. We know where we have to get.
We’re going to start not with F1 cars but racing at Daytona in the 24 hours at Daytona event. The person we are focusing on is Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a one-time F1 prodigy gone from that world for 30 years. Hayes now lives in his van, moving from driving gig to driving gig, essentially working for hire. His team wins the race, but he refuses to touch the trophy, or even really to celebrate. He collects his bonus check and drives off.
Sitting in a diner, Sonny is approached by Rubén Cervantes (Javier Bardem), his former teammate. Rubén is now the owner of his own team—APXGP (referred to as “Apex GP”), but has a serious problem. He’s had the team for two-and-a-half seasons and has not clocked a win. In fact, he’s never finished even in 10th place, which would earn the team a point. If he gets to the end of the third season without a win, nine more races, his investors will sell the team. What he wants is Sonny to become his new number two driver.
Do you see the problem? If you don’t, I’ll spell it out for you directly. If the APXGP team wins two races in, the movie is over. We know this is going to go to the end of the season without them having a win, so it’s all going to come down to the final race. It’s a movie, so of course that’s what is going to happen. We’re going to have drama for eight races—problems, set-backs, minor wins—and it’s all going to come down to the final race of the season. We don’t get the movie story if they win in race 14.
The biggest hurdle will be dealing with egos. Sonny certainly has one, but so does the number one racer for APXGP, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). Joshua is a cocky rookie and hasn’t quite seemed to grasped the fact that if the team gets sold, he’ll be out of a job, a fact that is brought up to him by Cashman (Samson Kayo), his cousin and manager. Joshua is young enough that he claims not to live with his mother Bernadette (Sarah Niles—recognizable as the team psychologist from Ted Lasso), but she is around him an awful lot.
There will also be tensions within the team. Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) is the only female technical director in F1. This gives her something to prove and makes her the obvious love interest for Sonny. There will also be some tension with Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia), the team principal. Hanging around is Peter Banning (Tobias Menzies), a board member for APXGP, and aside from Rubén, the only one who appears to be wanting to actually start winning. There will be a few of the more traditional characters, too, like Jodie (Callie Cooke), a tire gunner on the pit crew whose main character trait is “clumsy,” which means she’ll get a vindication moment at some point.
Here’s the thing: F1 is a fine movie, but it has no business being nominated for Best Picture. Its other Oscar nominations—Sound, Visual Effects, and Editing—are absolutely deserved, and I might consider cinematography as well. This is a very standard sports movie. Once we get the set up, it’s pretty obvious how things are going to go. The details might be different here or there, but we know there will be an accident or two, there will be some minor wins, there will be conflict between Sonny and Joshua, and eventually they will work as a team.
“Okay, Steve,” you say, “Tropes like these exist for a reason—they work.” Sure they do. But there are ways that they can be played with, subverted, or played with. This is a story where the beats are memorized by anyone who watches movies at all—you know where this is going to go, and ultimately, that’s a little disappointing. I don’t always need to be surprised, but F1 has no real surprises.
Don’t get me wrong—this is a good sports movie if you like that kind of thing. I am ambivalent when it comes to sports films. I am incredibly ambivalent when it comes to racing films, since any kind of racing is completely uninteresting to me. But it’s hard not to appreciate this for how it was filmed and for how close we really get to being in these cars.
If you’re a racing fan, you’ve probably already seen this. If you haven’t, you should. If you’re not a racing fan, the race scenes might surprise you. The problem is that nothing else in the film will.
Why to watch F1: It’s filmed beautifully, and the racing sequences are great.
Why not to watch: The plot is obvious.
