F1: The Movie mixes ho-hum character development with some fist-pumping race action
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If you're starting to sense some by-the-book character development, you're not far off. We've seen this kind of macho matchup before, and Sonny's burgeoning romance with the team's female head technician (Kerry Condon) isn't so much a question of will-they-won't-they but they-will-but-when. Though given that the movie runs a staggering two hours and 36 minutes from bumper to bumper, that still provides some tension.
Still, if the attractive human characters do little to surprise us, the car races are a mix of astonishment and beauty, and they hold up well on the biggest of big screens, including Imax. (If you want to see this at all, watch it in theatres and not on AppleTV, which has the streaming rights down the road.)
Cinematographer Claudio Miranda (another Top Gun: Maverick veteran) starts things off with a bang, as racing cars appear to be driving through exploding fireworks. And he keeps things moving with shots from inside the cramped cars as well as from cameras perched on the vehicles' edges (and sometimes swinging wildly through 90 degrees) and all around the track.
Even pit stops, which are timed in tenths of a second, add to the frantic pace of the race scenes, though whether they conform to reality I'll leave to more track-savvy specialists. For this non-racing-fan critic, the title is a perfect match for the film. Yes it's formulaic. But it's fast enough to finish strong regardless.
F1: The Movie opens June 27 in theatres.
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