“So, what is it about?” A couple of different characters pose this question to Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes - a washed-up Formula One driver who lost his shot at greatness at a young age and never found his way back - to emphasize an absolutely crucial character trait necessary to justify why a 60 year-old might be afforded the biggest stage in racing, but if we apply it to the film itself the answer is pretty straightforward:
F1: The Movie is a comeback story, an underdog tale, and a redemption arc that we’ve seen play out a thousand times before cloaked in a world myself and no one I personally know cares anything about. While this might not be true of most viewers around the globe, this lack of insight makes the goals of the film immediately striking to the uninitiated such as myself: immerse viewers in the world to the point they’re invested in the story it’s telling while successfully executing a fresh take on how that story is told.
From a storytelling standpoint, this is as simple as old school versus new, an old pro coming back into the fold of a young man’s game to show the “soft” rookie how it is done. Director Joseph Kosinski (the king of legacy sequels featuring colons) gives us everything we could want in such a sports drama from flashbacks to the aforementioned turning point in our protagonists life in a hurried, intercut fashion forcing us to piece much of it together ourselves down to the inevitable third act twist that presents an unforeseen challenge to the core team just as they’ve learned to put aside their differences and come together for the greater good. While much of the plotting in F1 can be seen coming from a mile away, what’s most invigorating is that it doesn’t try to upend expectations but in fact, Ehren Kruger’s screenplay wholeheartedly embraces them with Kosinski crafting his film to excel through each and every one of them.
