If you thought watching Old Man Hamilton click-clack his Ferrari-branded walking aidi around the world was failing to live up to your lofty expectations for motorsports entertainment in 2025, just wait until you see F1: The Movie.ii
Hyped to the heavens (even though my particular media bubble doesn’t permit such excesses, it seems safe to assume that it’s true), I succameiii to seeing the newest Brad Pitt flick on its last day in local theatres this week after no less than three entirely unrelated people unsolicitedly gushed lyrical about it and said that I absolutely had to see it.iv Whatever. Why not. I needed a break from golf, cigars, and vintage furniture shopping anyways.
So off I went with my junior colleague and “field trip” companion to the quiet cinema for some popcorn and big screen action. The room wasn’t completely empty either. Maybe a dozen other souls (which is a dozen more than were in the same venue at the same time of day when we saw Megalopolis nine months ago). The film probably would’ve been even better in IMAX but that perishable ship had sailed by the time we got around to it.
The theatre was the place to see it though, given the film is impressively shot and acoustically immersive, with the net effect of all the behind-the-scenes access to some of the world’s most historic motorsports facilities making you really appreciate the immense resources that go into “the circus.” Convincingly conveyed was the sheer unbridled romance of all the global race stops, which can’t help but cast a spell on jetsetters gypsies like yours truly… but that’s about where the enjoyment ended.
Overly obnoxious product placements,v tokenistic casting (two black guys on the grid??), jealous-old-maid-influenced love affairs that elevated crotchety old know-nothing female technical directorsvi over much lovelier (and much more age appropriate for Brad, which is to say much younger) wheel gunner girlvii made the film feel a bit too Biden-era, if you know what I mean. The dialogue was similarly damp as a steward’s review, with too few memorable exchanges,viii even though the meta-message still shone like a night race through the burnt rubber and amped-up exhaust notesix : viz. F1 isn’t just about raw pace, it’s first and foremost about politics (of which a subset is power and money), then strategy, technology, a pinch of glamour, and finally a dash of fast laps.
Pitt’s cowboy character was furthermore single-minded and dedicated enough to prevent the film from being “bad” per se, but not quite aspirational enough to go beyond that. For old men taking one last action-packed (agitproppy) shot at destiny, Top Gun Maverick is still the gold standard; Tom’s still got Brad licked six ways to Sunday.
2.5/5 Stars
- You can sort of picture it, y’know?
- 2025. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Produced by Joseph Kosinski, Jerry Bruckheimer, Sir Lewis Hamilton, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Chad Oman. ↩
- You can use “succumbed”, it’s fine, but not here, not now, not this time. ↩
- In hindsight, these recommendooooors were Drive To Survivers for whom Formula 1 is a high-end version of Big Brother. ↩
- eg. IWC, Mercedes, Heineken, etc… seriously you thought James Bond movies were bad? ↩
- Played by Kerry Condon. ↩
- Played by Callie Cooke. ↩
- One exception, it must be granted, was when Brad Pitt’s character Sonny Hayes said:
“If the last thing I do is drive that car, I will take that life, man— a thousand times.”
- V6-hybrid F1 cars don’t sound this good in-person! Ask me how I know. But editors piped fake exhaust and intake sounds into the speakers anyways, (y’know just like Ferrari does with its new $5mn F80 hypercar). All of which ties into a recent and very germane sociosexual observation from our old friend J. Baruth:
Male emotion tends to be frequency modulated. You either like or dislike something. Over time you might change your mind on the subject, but if you do it will be a gradual process.
Female emotion, by contrast, is often amplitude modulated. The opposite of being loved by a woman is not being hated by her. That’s like the cousin of being loved by her, and it could change to that at any time. The opposite of being loved by a woman is being ignored by her. For proof, look at any female-focused rom-com. The man and woman always start by seriously disliking each other. Then… it flips! From strong dislike to passionate attraction.
Tip for women who are interested in an indifferent man: Try to rise gradually in his esteem.
Tip for men who are interested in an indifferent woman: Try to be memorable or interesting for any reason whatsoever.
Which is why men hunt for higher octaves! ↩