Jonah Naplan   June 25, 2025

Brad Pitt is one of our last true movie stars whose projects tend to feel old-fashioned in a charming way. Teaming up with director Joseph Kosinski, his newest film is a classic racecar “old-timer-meets-newcomer” fable that feels like a thousand movies we’ve seen before but still has an independent personality of its own.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, one of those relics of the sport who had his time in the spotlight but is now a washed-up once-was living out of an RV. A freak accident forced him out of Formula One racing thirty years ago, and he’s been itching to get back into his prime ever since. A severe gambling addiction held him back from achieving this dream, and his races have been mostly pedestrian, a harsh drop-off from the international feats he enjoyed decades ago. When his old rival-turned-friend Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) approaches him with the opportunity to get back into F1 racing, the notion of returning to the spotlight seems too good to be true.

From the very beginning, “F1” feels like a nigh-biological cousin of those classic Clint Eastwood westerns where a world-wearied cowboy retires to a small town overrun by bandits and miscreants and acts like he doesn’t care until something clicks and he gets fully involved in delivering justice. Pitt doesn’t rally together an impoverished community in “F1,” but he does play a character similar to a cowboy, returning to a town that’s not like he remembers. Formula One is a different kind of beast now, dominated by young hotshots who couldn’t care less about what an old dinosaur has to teach them. In this way, the movie feels like a sequel in spirit to Kosinski’s extraordinary “Top Gun: Maverick,” another film about a legend returning to his old stomping ground, ruffling the feathers of an arrogant rookie, and ultimately reaching peace with him as they both realize they have much to learn from each other.

It’s also a total “Dad movie” and the perfect cinematic outing for the Fourth of July, with just enough rah-rah patriotism lurking underneath the exceptional racing sequences to make it a fine companion piece to the celebratory fireworks. Hayes, like Maverick, is painted as an all-American hero, driven by the conservative values of yore. His hands-on mentality and analog methods cock eyebrows from the new racers and staff (even the movie makes visual jokes about Hayes running early-morning laps around the track he’s about to race on). Pitt brings a retro charm to his role that other big names of the 90s and early aughts can whip out at the flip of a dime, too, like Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Denzel Washington. He has an endearing everyman charisma, while still letting us know he’s a *movie star.* And, like the dashing male protagonist of a 90s movie, he can get whatever woman he wants. In “F1,” that lucky gal is Kate (an utterly bewitching Kerry Condon), the technical director of Ruben’s APXGP team, who plays to that classic trope of pretending to be unimpressed by this show-off at first—she’s “hard to get”—but ultimately swooning at his masculine charms by the end (as this movie is PG-13, the sex is never depicted, but we can best assume it proceeded the making-out session undercut by a romantic playlist).

On the other side of this race is Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the determined newcomer whose ego is just as inflated as Sonny’s but in a different way. A protégé like we’ve seen in so many similar movies (Kosinski’s prior work with Rooster in “Maverick” almost certainly inspired his direction here), Pearce is determined to make a name for himself in a competitive industry. Writer Ehren Kruger has him laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought, or monologuing to his supportive mother (Sarah Niles) about his dreams and ambitions, setting up an underdog story that “F1” follows on the side. His banter with Sonny is unapologetically biting and rough around the edges. We enjoy watching the two of them riff and raff off each other because we know that, no matter what, the script will have them working out their differences by the end.

Much like the dog-fighting in “Maverick,” Kosinski brings an intensity to the racing in “F1” that wouldn’t seem obvious if you simply watched the sport on TV. His refusal to take shortcuts and dedication to cinematic realism shines through in his use of actual Formula One cars, which Pitt and Idris each spent four months learning how to drive at top speeds. Kosinski stretches his legs particularly far here and isn’t apologetic about it (the movie runs at a lengthy 156 minutes and doesn’t even roll the opening credits until after the first 25). The racing sequences are not drawn out in montage; they go long, cutting between Pitt and Idris while they try to one-up, cut off, and, eventually, help each other as the movie hops around internationally.

All of Pitt’s recent movies have similarly used age and stardom as key thematic devices. In “Wolfs,” Pitt and Clooney teamed up as con artists as a tribute to two of their most beloved roles in Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” trilogy. In both “Babylon” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” he portrayed a versatile actor attempting to acclimate to a changing industry. In “Bullet Train,” he used his “nobody” disguise to hunt down a briefcase and then his assassin-level skills to protect it from others. And in “Ad Astra,” he played a thoughtful astronaut whose time in space allowed him to consider his life and everything he cared about. “F1” allows him the opportunity to play the same kind of weathered legend he knows so well, but in an entirely different package. There’s a kind of stunt-acting intensity required of him in this particular part, both as a racer and as a mentor, that he nails immediately, creating a relationship with a younger kindred spirit reaching for success.

Not everything about the movie works. A side-plot involving investors, headed by an unctuous Peter Banning (Tobias Menzies), who might want to buy out the team, could have been cut out, while the developments between the legend and the rookie seem rushed (after some initial conflict, it feels like Pearce warms up to Sonny practically overnight). But these shortcomings don’t undermine everything great about “F1,” which has racing sequences just as good as “Ford v. Ferrari,” and a retro aesthetic as wonderfully nostalgic as any movie made during the actual 80s and 90s, best seen and heard on the largest screen possible.

This review hasn’t delved much into the plot of the film, not because there isn’t one (though it’s very light), but because it’s not necessary. You’ll be able to predict it all from a mile away, no doubt, and that’s part of the charm. When the racing enters a flow state, perfectly matched with Stephen Mirrione’s editing and Hans Zimmer’s pounding score, which feels like his racecar-inflected answer to “Challengers,” we’re particularly jarred by a sudden halt in the action, such as a crash or a collision. The movie warns us about everything that could possibly go wrong on the track, leaving us on edge while the characters face aggressive drivers, faulty engines or tires, and even their own memories of disaster fading in and out of consciousness.

These days, the summer movie season is fully booked up with blockbusters perfectly calibrated to meet their franchise expectations. It’s only every so often that a film like “F1” comes around and focuses only on being a movie. Like a racecar, it zooms by so quickly before we can even grasp everything it has to offer. Leave it to the veterans to remind us what going to the movies is all about.

Now playing in theaters.