If you have been living under a rock, you might not be aware that a movie about Formula 1 is coming out at the end of this month. You also might not have seen social media swamped with the premiere last night in New York City.
The North American release date for the film that is simply titled ‘F1’ is June 27, so you have just 10 days to wait until you might be able to cast your own eyes over it.
As one of the lucky members of the Formula 1 media, I got the chance to see it in a preview screening on IMAX in Montreal last week. And that means you are about to see lot of opinions from a lot of people – including myself right now – whom this movie is very much not aimed at.
In fact, if you’re reading this piece right now, it’s not really aimed at you, either. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be entertained for two and a half hours by what is a truly massive blockbuster.
I’m no film critic, but don’t just take my word for that, as David Fear wrote in his Rolling Stone review: “A tale of a veteran taking one last shot at the checkered flag, a hotheaded youngster in need of a mentor, and an underdog team gunning for glory via a sports-film narrative that couldn’t be more formulaic — please tip your waiters! — this throwback to old-school blockbusters is indeed a well-oiled, finely tuned operation.”
That veteran, of course, is Brad Pitt. And any movie with Brad Pitt in it is going to generate interest, headlines, and end up on the radar of far more people than F1 as a sport currently does.
It was emphasized walking around Times Square last night, where the sea of phones stretching to catch a shot of the red carpet was biggest when Pitt arrived, and where a passer-by at Radio City simply explained to a colleague that “Brad Pitt’s new film is premiering”. No mention of racing or F1, just that it’s a Brad Pitt movie.
And it is a Brad Pitt movie in every sense. Pitt almost feels like a caricature of himself, really leaning into the cheeky, cheesy and rogue aspects of returning veteran Sonny Hayes, who appears to have a disdain for the rules and authority, but of course learns what he needs to do to help turn a struggling team around.
You and I know that a driver alone doesn’t walk in having not driven in F1 for 30 years, tell the technical director what they need to do, and end up (spoiler alert) completely turning around a team that was unable to score points.
But this is Hollywood. It’s about the story being entertaining, not a documentary of what would really happen. And Carlos Sainz summed up perfectly what that means for existing fans at the premiere.
“I’ll just say to the pure F1 fan, be open-minded to Hollywood F1 films, but then for all the new fans, that’s our true sport,” Sainz said. “It’s what our sport is all about – about teamwork, about sacrifices we need to make, and for the new fans enjoy it because it’s a good entrance into our sport.”
Sometimes the F1 film successfully walks the line between Hollywood and the real thing. Sometimes, it does not… Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
Where the authenticity comes in, is with the fact that the shots of Hayes and teammate Joshua Pearce in the cars are Pitt and Damson Idris really driving cars at high speed, on actual F1 circuits, usually during real grand prix weekends. It helps provide some spectacular racing footage, that really is brilliantly captured within the cars.
Actual team factories and wind tunnels are used, as the entire film was dropped into the real world of F1, and they stand shoulder to shoulder with the real drivers who are not acting, but genuinely about to climb into their cars and race.
At times it perhaps tries to be too authentic without the need, in terms of utilizing certain paddock characters or explaining technical details that feel like they risk sounding dull when juxtaposed with some other aspects of the film. But they are there to try and get a non-racing viewer to understand how certain scenarios could come to pass.
Crash scenes are all based on real incidents, even if one in particular risks being taken that bit too far. Still, if you’re a racing aficionado, you can spend the film identifying the real-life moments that set the foundation for what is being shown.
You’ll also spend plenty of time saying “that would never happen”, but not in a ‘Driven’ kind of way. Certain regulations might be ignored at certain times for the benefit of the storyline, but you’ll spend more time picking out real drivers and team bosses in the middle of a race weekend than rule violations going unaddressed.
On the character front, there are lots of stereotypes that might feel lazy to some, although other film critics see it as old-school entertainment. Among other points, it’s a bit of a shame that the impressive female technical director Kate McKenna – played by Kerry Condon – becomes the love interest and only builds a good car once told by Pitt how to do her job better by giving him something for “combat”.
The word combat is raised again in a team-wide chanting scene that is as cringey as they come, but then one current team on the grid had a former team principal demand they all respond to his call of “Let’s go…” with “RACING!” in the garage every Friday morning, so it’s still close to reality.
And how close other aspects get is actually what could be the making of the film. From Apple’s point of view, it’s aimed at the widest possible audience to generate as much box office revenue as it can, while F1 will judge success based on how many new people then choose to tune in for a race at some stage in the future.
Given the number of different areas the film highlights – great racing, spectacular crashes, intra-team battles, political maneuvering, technical brilliance and controversies among them – it’s enough of a window into the sport for it to not seem totally detached from reality if a new fan does try and learn more about F1 moving forward.
But you and I don’t need that, so for some it might be too hard to get lost in the APXGP world when you know so much about the real one that it was filmed in -– as incredible as that world looks.
Will ‘F1’ prove to be a success on the fronts it wants to? I think so. But will you enjoy it? I can only go as far as saying you might.
