F1 Movie Review

F1 MOVIE REVIEW

Look, this newsletter doesn't always have enough content, okay? You've noticed, I've noticed, we've all noticed. But what else have you noticed?

I have opinions about movies, and guess what? Unlike most people, mine are backed by education, training and experience. So! We're doing movie reviews!

Okay, let's cover the basics: I am a story, film and F1 expert. You may not know this last one, but my Opinions about story-telling in general and film just barely exceed my Opinions on Formula 1.

Next basic: What is a "Movie?"

We don't have time for this and I've just realised this intro is a bad idea because I have to teach you about actors and stuff. You probably already know this?

Okay, but what's Formula 1? It's a motorsport. It has qualities too numerous to go into, they'll come up as relevant while we talk about the "F1 movie" which is terrible SEO by the way.

On paper, the F1 movie is an attempt to move F1 (the sport) to the American mainstream, where it's struggled to gain viewership; this is also a fairly complex situation we don't have time to go into.

Now before we actually get to disuccusing it, my spoiler policy: I don't have one. This isn't really the type of movie where spoilers matter, I have to break down the plot of the movie in simple terms before we go over it point by point, so here goes:

Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) is a rich guy. He's bought an F1 team and it sucks; he's losing lots of money. He recruits his racing buddy some the 90's, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) to race for him. Sonny Hayes butts heads with Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris) a rookie driver and romances the team's technical director (Kerry Condon)

Everyone thinks Sonny's washed up, but through unconventional means (we'll get to this) he leads the team to score some points and eventually a race win.

Okay now we can go into detail, starting with the facet that most surprised me: the visual technology, cinematography and editing.

F1 (the movie, not the sport) makes extensive use of unique cameras positioned on the cars themselves, as well as digitally edited versions of real footage to add the fictional F1 team into real races. These features were extensively touted by Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) and Joseph Kosinski (director), and while I had my preconceptions about this movie going into, this is one aspect I had no reason to doubt.

So what's the problem?

Simply put...it looks bad. At its best, the cameras give the audience unique perspectives but very, very little is gained when weighed against the expense, danger and production time, and frankly, the way this footage is edited rarely makes best use of the cameras anyway. Overall, the movie isn't well edited, and I found myself surprised in the the theatre when I saw footage of real races quite sloppily edited in at different resolutions and framerates, and on top of this, the digitally edited cars are quite obvious, and even a little jarring in how much they stand out from the real-life backgrounds.

In terms of visuals, as I said, I had no reason to be cynical, but overall, this technology ended up giving the movie a sloppy, hastily edited together look.   

Really not helping keep things together is our cast.

Okay, let's start with the only real offender: Brad Pitt. Yes, this is a vanity project and yes, it really shows. That said...Brad's performance was absent at best. Who's vanity project is this, if not his? Most of his role involves summoning a smug smirk, but there are moments where he really seems as if he's regretting this whole project. Too many pull-ups, Brad?

Also, I have to say that no-one else did anything wrong, I really can't dislike any of the other performances, and I can only assume that the lack of on-screen chemistry our lead has with anyone is just Pitt phoning it in and giving his poor co-stars nothing to work with.

From the actor to the character, F1 (the movie, not the sport) is exceptionally weak on character work: Sonny Hayes is cynical, dishonest and violent. Did you know that it's important the audience like your characters, especially your lead? 

The only stand in here for any sort of appeal is the worst, most obvious kind of pandering to the type of guys who complain about "everyone being too sensitive" on Facebook and then wonder why their kids don't talk to them.

The movie is rife with this, obviously, since Sonny is our lead, but one particular incident stood out to me: Joshua Pierce (Sonny's team mate) really don't get along with him and they fight on track. A paddock disagreement ensues; fingers are pointed, voices are raised, but ultimately Sonny is allowed to hold team strategy hostage and push his team-mate around.

Later on, though Joshua gets one over on Sonny, and immediately Sonny gets violent, shoving and grappling his teammate, even threatening him. I don't say this lightly, but I really was quite surprised to see the double standard; Joshua loudly complains and the movie portrays his as entitled, Sonny physically assaults him and he's shown as a good natured hothead. Could there be some deeper level of societal prejudice at play? Who can say.  

Marketing for this movie was also quite vocal in emphasising how accurate the movie would be, down to having Lewis Hamilton (the most accomplished F1 driver of all time) consulting. I had no reason to assume they would stumble here, but somehow...they did.

Aside from some deep-cut engineering references like driving modes and car components, technical accuracy is out the window. What happened to the media tent? The legal requirements to wear branded gear? (so Sonny can always wear his half unbuttoned cool guy shirt), or Sonny's super license? Guess what? You can't drive in F1 (the sport, not the movie) without one and the movie makes it very clear he doesn't have one! Of course it's a movie, but when you spend your marketing ambassadors out to crow about accuracy, the audience is going to expect accuracy.

But let's talk about the writing for a little. I don't like to single out writers, but in this case the movie does it for me, since we only have one credit.

Firstly and most obviously, the movie has a strong over-reliance on VoiceOver (that's VO) to convey plot points, despite the fact that we strongly establish the relationship between driver, race engineer and team, but no, we spend more time listening to the commentators. Is this a problem?

It might not be if not for the fact that our writer (Ehren Kruger) has failed to do do his due diligence: commentators do not talk the way they talk in this movie. Their lines are stilted and totally un-representative of mid-race banter, and this reveals a further problem: a sad lack of research.

There are thousands upon thousands of hours of commentary on F1 races, and some quite obvious through lines running under the different styles and personalities. Why then does the F1 movie showcase none of them? Again, a lack of proper research that's reflected in the plot of the movie. My next point will demonstrate.

You'll recall in my synopsis that Sonny Hayes utilizes "unconventional means."

That's not quite true, in fact, Sonny spends almost all his racing time on camera straight-up cheating, sometimes even deliberately causing racing incidents, including crashes, one of which lands his teammate in hospital.

This is bad enough from a character stand point, especially when the movie's lens expect us to cheer on his wily old fox trickery, but it also stretches and breaks credulity from a technical accuracy stand point: Sonny might get away with one of his races, but after establishing a pattern of bad behavior he'd quickly find himself with at least a race ban, and his continuing bad behavior would see his (non-existent) super license revoked.

But why do you need a super license? And why does the movie emphasise that Sonny is "old?" This is because F1 (the sport, not the movie) cars are extremely physically demanding to drive, and commensurately dangerous for anyone without the ability to control them, hence the special certifications required. Does this come up in the movie? No.

In fact, while Joshua Pierce diligently exercises his core, neck strength and reaction time, Sonny wordlessly scoffs at these "High falutin' fancy boy techno-wizardry" and spends most of his time doing pull-ups or push-ups, which aren't going to help control an F1 (the sport not the movie) car all that much.

All this said, I was ready to let this point slide; I'm not a huge fan of assuming someone can't do something until they at least get a chance to try. Why belabour the point, then?

Well I'll tell you, reader: the actors drive pared-down F3 (the sport, not a hypothetical three-quel) cars in this movie. While still powerful, they are significantly slower and even more significantly less complex than F1 (the sport, not the movie) cars, but you'd never know it from the marketing: they trotted out Bruckheimer and Kosinski to talk-up the actor's driving performance, at times implying they were on par with real F1 (the sport, not the movie) drivers. Even Deadline, who should know better, quoted Bruckheimer as saying that they trained on "F4, F3, and on," conveniently allowing the reader to fill in the blanks.

To conclude, it may come as no surprise to you that I disliked this movie on a technical and personal level. Obviously, I do, but at least it inspires an emotional response. Hatred, after all, is passion and therefore animus.

Let's examine it from a few different angles for good measure:

Is it a good movie, F1 or actor interest aside? Not really. The characters are either bland or violently unlikeable. Javier Bardem is cool as always I guess.

Is it a good movie for F1 fans? Not really. A few cameos and references aside, fan-service is minimal and something tells me that watching an actor starring in their own vanity project overtake their favorite real driver might rub some people the wrong way.

Is it a good movie for Brad Pitt fans? Uhhh...I can't really fathom this mind-set, so I can't really say for sure, but I've never been good at separating an artist form their work, something about feeling an obligation to be a responsible human being/adult I guess.

The old guys in my showing seemed to like Brad's smug half-quips at least. Will they be checking out F1 (the sport, not the movie) any time soon? Maybe, but they're going to be disappointed and almost all will bounce off an extremely complex, technical sport in which anyone who acts like Sonny Hayes would be banned after a single race.