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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cF1: The Movie\u201d takes viewers inside the exciting world of Formula One auto-racing. The director is Joseph Kosinski, best known for taking \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d to the top of the yearly box office three years ago. Between that movie\u2019s jets and this movie\u2019s cars, it seems the man\u2019s specialty is directing movies about things that go \u201cwhoosh.\u201d And yes, this movie is best enjoyed in premium-format theaters (for me it was a Dolby) that can really give the audience a good taste of the whooshing. That is to say I got maximum enjoyment out of the whooshing cars and very little enjoyment out of everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brad Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, a former Formula One driver whose career ended in a crash in the 90\u2019s. Now he\u2019s broke and lives out of his van, taking on freelance driving jobs whenever someone needs him in a pinch. As it happens, former rival-turned-friend Ruben (Javier Bardem), now a team owner, needs a driver in a pinch. His team hasn\u2019t gotten a single top-ten finish all season and is in danger of being sold. Rookie driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) has a lot of potential, but he\u2019s consistently being bested by more experienced drivers. It takes some arm-twisting, but Sonny agrees to come aboard as Joshua\u2019s teammate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sonny doesn\u2019t fit in well at first. Most of team is European, he\u2019s American. They\u2019re up on the \u201ccurrent\u201d Formula One, he\u2019s been out of the game for 30 years. They\u2019re high-strung, he\u2019s easygoing, etc. He especially ruffles the feathers of Joshua, who sees him as a threat to his spot on the team, as well as lead engineer Kate (Kerry Condon), who thinks he isn\u2019t cooperative with those who know better. Of course, by the end of the film, he\u2019ll be these characters\u2019 mentor and lover, obviously respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does Sonny win everybody over? By racing, of course. He has instincts that the others don\u2019t, and is willing to try things that others won\u2019t. Sometimes this means unconventional tricks with timing, sometimes this means exploiting loopholes in the rules and flirting with penalties (some will see his tactics as very unsportsmanlike), sometimes this means doing things that are extremely dangerous. But he\u2019s never going to be the best if he plays things safe, and he\u2019s obsessed with being the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether or not you like \u201cF1: The Movie\u201d comes down to two things: how much you like the Pitt performance and how much you like the racing scenes. To me, they both have the same problem: they\u2019re top-notch at what they do, without impressing me much by doing it. Yes, Pitt is effortlessly charming, but he brings the same effortless charm to every role, and there\u2019s little else to make the character unique. And I don\u2019t just mean he\u2019s not unique for a Brad Pitt character, I mean he\u2019s not unique for this style of movie hero. I really felt like I was watching Tom Cruise in \u201cTop Gun: Maverick,\u201d maybe with a shade less dedication to the craft because I don\u2019t think Pitt is putting his body through the wringer for all these racing scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for the racing, much like Pitt\u2019s charisma, I certainly can\u2019t call it incompetent. I\u2019m sure they got everything right in painstaking, extremely difficult detail. But also like Pitt\u2019s charisma, the film thinks its ability to nail Formula One driving carries it to greatness and it just doesn\u2019t. In just the past few years, \u201cFord v Ferreri\u201d and \u201cGran Turismo\u201d gave me equally exciting racing sequences, and both had better stories to go around them. So I\u2019ll put it this way: if you\u2019ve gone a long time without seeing a Brad Pitt movie, a racing movie, or a \u201cTop Gun\u201d movie, and you\u2019re willing to give this movie premium-format prices and over two and a half hours of your time, then you might get something out of \u201cF1: The Movie.\u201d Otherwise, steer clear of this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cF1: The Movie\u201d is rated PG-13 for strong language, and action. Its running time is 155 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver \u201cF1: The Movie\u201d takes viewers inside the exciting world of Formula One auto-racing. The director is Joseph Kosinski, best known for taking \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDdcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjUtMDctMDFUMTUzNjEwLjQyMC53ZWJwP2ZpdD0zMDAlMkM0NDUmc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJGMTogVGhlIE1vdmllIFx1MjAxMyBNb3ZpZSBSZXZpZXciLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNjMwNDA2NjF9.M2Jzl1FDJfWHyvjmCtbH43BVbPu3vi7oKlJ8V6EO8VUMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":56587,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/image-2025-07-01T153610.420.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[11766],"class_list":["post-56586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-f1-the-movie-movie-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56588,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56586\/revisions\/56588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}