'F1®: The Movie': Lots of cars, lots of testosterone, and lots of trademarks

It's probably the first film to feature the trademark symbol (®) in its title, in case anyone forgets what we're here to talk about. After telling the story of the Barbie doll , Air Jordan sneakers , and Hot Cheetos , it's now the turn of the intellectual property of Formula 1® to tell its own story, reversing the preconception of a sport of multimillionaires driving ultra-expensive cars and that, circuit after circuit, displays its engine capacity surrounded by luxury from old Europe to petro-dictatorships . The opposite of that epic comedy about the Jamaican bobsleigh team, The Right Stuff (1993), in other words. Between Mercedes, Pirelli, and Ferrari logos , F1® : the film knows it needs an antagonistic protagonist, one who disbelieves in everything that characterizes the business, that is, a failed driver who doesn't race for money, fame, or competitiveness, but for the need to find the decisive moment , a mystical moment in which he feels like he's levitating, a moment of spiritual contact with that father who was a mechanic and who instilled in his son a passion for the beautiful art of driving cars. Or some supposedly profound excuse like that.

And in all its political, moral, and emotional justification, twisted in its very conception as a vehicle for commercial diversification of a registered trademark , F1®: The Movie works in its manipulation. It's highly entertaining, it's exciting, it's spectacular, and it even makes you forget that what they're looking for here is to expand the market to a United States without much tradition. "Not long ago, the future of this sport in the United States seemed bleak; even one race a year seemed too much for a market that F1 had repeatedly tried and failed to conquer," summarized The New York Times in a 2024 report . And in China . Now that advertising, like in a Futurama -style dystopia, only has to infiltrate our dreams (no consumer platform should be wasted), the line between the commercial and the sports drama is already invisible .

And I, the writer, who has never seen an F1® race , who disdains all the values ​​surrounding this industry of excess, feel dirty . Because everything works, because I can't take my eyes off the screen, because even though I'm aware of the manipulative nature of its art, even though I anticipate its every step, even though I question the sincerity of its motivations, the film is as absorbing as a roll of Scottex® toilet paper.

After Top Gun: Maverick , director Joseph Kosinski once again turns to the figure of the renegade veteran to once again champion second chances, the value of experience and camaraderie at a time when individualism seems to be sweeping everything away. If Tom Cruise keeps running and flying against time, the other great sex symbol of nineties cinema, Brad Pitt , also wants his sixty-something movie, which still has a long way to go. If in Top Gun: Maverick Cruise plays a daredevil fighter pilot who has seen it all, in F1®: The Movie , Pitt plays a daredevil and seen it all Formula 1® driver, a guy who started his career in the nineties, with a promising future cut short by bad decisions and excessive risk, who returns to competition to save the team of his friend and former teammate, Rubén Cervantes ( Javier Bardem ), who needs his team to win at least one race to avoid the team being sold .

Cervantes, a charismatic and dedicated Bardem , turns to Sonny Hayes—that's the name of Pitt's character—as an act of desperation, entrusting himself to a miracle when nothing remains. Pitt has never displayed such magnetism in what he does so well: acting as if nothing matters, chewing gum with his mouth open, shirt unbuttoned, the lonely cowboy who returns for one last mission. It almost makes you forget the complaints of "physical abuse" filed by his ex-partner, Angelina Jolie, There he must face the rivalry of his teammate, Joshua Pierce ( Damson Idris ), a young driver who belongs to that generation of presumption, tik toks and reserved with girls. I imagine it was always like that but in a more modest way. On his team is also Kate McKenna ( Kerry Condon ), the technical director of the team who, a woman in a man's world , needs to prove that she is the best F1® car designer, even to that Physics professor who told her at university that she would never get there.

F1®, the movie, is a testosterone-fueled melodrama, with men who aren't soft and indebted to their father figures. It's a melodrama in which men clench their fists in victory, in which men squeeze their eyelids shut like old cowboys, in which men have fun smashing expensive vehicles. And it's appreciated that, beyond the character of Joshua Pierce's mother, Bernadette ( Sarah Niles ), who has a moment of amusing rapture with the senior competitor whom her son describes as "an old man," the other female character with some presence, McKenna, is constructed in a time that no longer tolerates the character of the utilitarian flower girl in the love storyline.

Kosinski's film, with a script by Ehren Kruger (writer of the Transformers saga), is crafted to the millimeter to feel the epic nature of the disaster. It thrills with the same old stories of love and jealousy , but wrapped in a new gift wrap. With its doses of comedy and impossible obstacles, and thanks to a protagonist determined to let himself be carried away by adrenaline , even if it costs him his health, F1®: The Movie aims to be an anti-capitalist ode set in a turbo-capitalist context , never better said, with a character who rebels against being tamed and bought, an outcast with his own rules, who agrees to play the game, but in his own way. It's also a sports film about teamwork and against the rampant individualism of the self-made successful man model.

Kosinski 's direction and Stephen Mirrioni 's editing are prodigious in their level of visual spectacle . Who hasn't wanted to drive an F1® car, even if it's through someone else's eyes, as if participating in a Gran Turismo race? And Hans Zimmer's adrenaline-pumping electronic music accompanies this theme park where even the most ardent F1® detractors will have a good time. Never has the interior of a car provided so much adventure. After all, if motorized chases have always worked in action films , why not make a movie based on car races? And here, obstacle after obstacle and popcorn in hand, in a conservative film that champions vintage values , one once again becomes aware of the manipulative power of cinema. And one feels dirty, very dirty, but still can't look away, clinging to the seat if her life depended on it.