F1 (2025) Movie Review: A Steady Drive Through Familiar Blockbuster Circuits

Whatever career expectations one may have had for the man who started out directing a “Tron” movie, in all likelihood, they had little (if anything) to do with becoming a bastion of grounded, tactile blockbuster filmmaking in a Hollywood scene so constantly in danger of losing itself to lifeless pixels. It’s not as if this was a gradual shift for Joseph Kosinski, either, who followed up his (neon-tinged) Disney vehicle with a barren Tom Cruise vehicle, but his association with the latter almost ensured that “Top Gun: Maverick” would become the perfect marriage of star-power and the assured hand of a director willing to bend to it.

Now, with “F1,” Kosinski finds himself banking on the flyaway success of the long-belated aviation sequel with a near-impossible proposition in 2025: a $200 million blockbuster based on nothing at all. Well, nothing except the longstanding brand recognition of Formula One racing and the even more colossal brand recognition of his newly chosen leading man.

In any case, the word you’ll hear quite often within the plot of “F1” is “strategy”—in this instance, the strategies needed to maneuver through a losing field of concrete vehicular combat to ease one’s way through the ranks and come out with a shiny trophy at the end. For Kosinski’s part, the success of “Maverick” has taught him (and new funding party Apple) to follow his own proven strategy for success: take a sturdy superstar, throw him into a real vehicle built for ridiculous amounts of speed, and hold on for dear life. The results are, as you might expect, tantamount to a victory lap along roughly the same route.

F1 (2025) — A still from “F1” (2025) | Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes

Substituting one “Interview With the Vampire” star for another, “F1” trades Tom Cruise for Brad Pitt in the role of Sonny Hayes, an aging, would-be racing star whose career was suddenly sent off the tracks just as it was gearing up for full speed—what causes this derailment will likely take you all of three seconds to surmise. Now, Hayes is content to race small-time circuits until his former colleague Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) comes to him with a proposition: join his flailing F1 racing team and rescue it from certain doom in the ongoing season of Grand Prix races.

Initially reluctant to come on board, Hayes eventually gives in for only the most logical reasons: the love of the game and the need to ensure we have a full-length movie. Once involved, his rogue tactics put him at odds with his new team; this friction is headed by the team’s hotshot novice driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), and given a more romantic tinge by the team’s technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon, somehow exceeding the levels of Irishness she bestowed upon the world in “The Banshees of Inisherin”).

As you can probably tell, the chosen characters and their dynamics are unlikely to bypass or subvert what we all know and expect from a typical underdog sports narrative, and clearly, “F1” isn’t making that its priority whatsoever. Rather, Kosinski and his screenwriter Ehren Kruger opt to lean into the firm backbone of the genre’s rubric, allowing the charisma and earnest charm of the cast and the lack of cynicism in the story between them to carry the film across the finish line.

At the head of the pack, Pitt is expectedly collected and nonchalant, to the point that tensions with Hayes are driven less by mercurial hotheadedness and more by the actor’s willingness to step behind the wheel of (what appears to be, at least) a real race car.

It’s here that Kosinski’s skills as a stately craftsman bear the most fruit, as “F1” relies most heavily on the bone-shaking rumble of the sputtering engines and the sharp screeching of tires against pavement to keep the adrenaline flowing. At every juncture, the director makes a concerted effort to maintain the flow of engagement with a straightforward understanding of space and movement in any given race, and curating a decent diversity in presentation to keep each of these many events as fresh to the viewer’s eyes as possible.

To that point, though, the reality does eventually set in that, in this two-and-a-half-hour blockbuster about cars driving in circles, there’s only so much Kosinski will be able to provide to liven things up after the fifth or sixth go-around. “F1,” for all its genuine interest in keeping the drama off the tracks, simplistically palpable enough to fuel the tension on them, falls into a repetitive flow that, eventually, veers its way into a moderate weariness without a fresh opening in the road. At one point, Kosinski even flirts with a split-screen tactic, before quickly abandoning it lest this multi-million-dollar film production appear too reminiscent of a friendly Mario Kart match.

“Top Gun: Maverick” may have been Joseph Kosinski’s unequivocal boost to the big-time—Apple has already doubled down on their Kosinski/Jerry Bruckheimer investment for the pair’s upcoming UFO project—but “F1” proved the director’s chance to demonstrate his ability to handle the driver’s seat even without the safety net of Cruise Control. In virtually all facets, this latest feels like a lateral move towards continuing the lifeblood of classic blockbuster fare, even if the resulting race won’t, in a qualitative sense at least, lead these drivers across the megahit landscape with any sort of definitive lead.