‘F1 The Movie’ review: Brad Pitt puts ‘Top Gun’ on wheels

In many ways, Formula One is ripe for the Hollywood blockbuster treatment. It’s a high-stakes, hyper-glamorous world where the fastest man wins – most of the time, anyway. It’s also more popular than ever thanks to the hit Netflix documentary series Formula One: Drive To Survive.

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But in other ways, this supremely technical motorsport poses a challenge to screenwriters. Just how gripping – pun intended – can you make a team debate about tyre types?

Made alongside Formula One’s governing body with Lewis Hamilton as a producer, F1 The Movie is obviously a fabulous advert for the sport – how many films have a registered trademark symbol in their title? The current crop of drivers all appear as themselves, mainly as superstar extras in bustling pit and paddock scenes, and F1 legend Toto Wolff gets to deliver a couple of impish lines. His acting is actually pretty good.

But F1 The Movie also works as a blockbuster popcorn flick in the mold of Top Gun: Maverick. That’s no surprise really, given that it reunites that film’s director, Joseph Kosinski, with its producer Jerry Bruckheimer and co-writer Ehren Kruger.

Here, Kruger’s screenplay requires a hefty suspension of disbelief. After three decades away, daredevil driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is coaxed back by his old teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), who’s now running flagging F1 team Apex Grand Prix (APXGP).

At 61, Pitt is 18 years older than the current most senior F1 driver (43-year-old Fernando Alonso) but he’s still athletic enough to pull off a racing suit. As Hamilton noted when his casting was announced: “Brad looks like he’s aging backwards.”

Sonny is a wily outsider with no time for press conferences and photo opps, while his new teammate Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) is a talented rookie trying to build a personal brand. In fairness, this isn’t a bad idea given that real-life F1 driver Lando Norris is now marketable enough to have his own energy drink.

This film really is an old-school crowd-pleaser, so it’s no spoiler to reveal that the two men’s initial frostiness melts into mutual respect. And as the team’s technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) transforms their “shitbox” car into a “combat” vehicle, APXGP no longer look like also-rans – they might even have a shot at winning.  Along the way, Condon delivers fifth-gear work in a third-gear role as Kate also succumbs to Sonny’s crafty charms.

Though the nine races that the film careers through are a couple too many, the team’s bumpy progress is gripping. Soundtracked by a scorching score from Hans Zimmer, who previously composed music for another Formula One movie, 2013’s Rush, the racing sequences are consistently thrilling. Obviously Pitt and Idris aren’t competing in real F1 races, but they did drive modified Formula Two vehicles on actual grand prix circuits. You can really feel the G-force.

The film’s souped-up denouement at the Abu Dhabi grand prix is utterly ludicrous, but by this point, F1 The Movie has built up enough goodwill to get away with it. Buckle up and enjoy the ride, safe in the knowledge that the tyre talk never gets too overwhelming.