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Irish Examiner
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Film review: The F1 movie is a fine vehicle for summer popcorn cinema
For a mega-budget summer blockbuster, F1: The Movie (PG) opens with a surprisingly modest ambition: Formula One team boss Ruben (Javier Bardem) wants his old pal Sonny (Brad Pitt) to come out of semi-retirement to help the struggling APX team win just one race. In fact, Ruben would be delighted with a podium place; and if the veteran maverick Sonny can mentor APX's promising driver Joshua (Damson Idris) along the way, helping the young tyro to channel his raw talent into a more mature, team-oriented approach, Ruben will let Sonny write his own cheque. There's only two problems. One, Sonny isn't in it for the money; two, Sonny's a throwback who can't be doing with all the fuss – rules, especially – that goes with competing in Formula One these days. Given the basic set-up, it's no surprise to learn that the writers – Ehren Kreuger and Joseph Kosinski, with Kosinski directing – recently combined on Top Gun: Maverick, but F1 has a charm of its own, much of it derived from Kerry Condon, who plays Kate, the no-nonsense APX technical director who takes it upon herself to puncture Sonny's ego at every opportunity, and in an accent that unapologetically strips the paint from the walls. In fact, most of the main characters are pretty likeable here: Javier Barden is artfully flighty as the smooth-talking Ruben, Damson Idris holds his own as the fearless but impetuous Joshua, and Brad Pitt is charmingly self-deprecating as the world-weary knight-errant Sonny, who is just about holding it all together for one last tilt at glory. The driving sequences are expertly done (the camerawork from inside the cars is either thrilling or terrifying, depending on how you feel about piloting rockets travelling at 350 km/h), and the fact that the movie is made in association with the FIA gives it verisimilitude – Sonny and Joshua are racing against Ferrari and Red Bull, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. Is it plausible? Not really. Is it the best popcorn-friendly cinema of the summer so far? Most definitely. M3gan 2.0 M3gan 2.0 ★★★☆☆ Theatrical release The killer doll from M3gan (2022) returns in M3gan 2.0 (15A), although the stakes are considerably higher this time around: M3gan's basic programming has been enhanced to the point where she is now a top secret military asset, aka Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), an unkillable AI uber-weapon that immediately goes rogue and begins hunting down her creators as a precursor to annihilating the entire human race. Standing in Amelia's way are M3gan's creator Gemma (Allison Williams), Gemma's 12-year-old niece Cady (Violet McGraw), and the original M3gan (Amie McDonald), who is really, really sorry she tried to kill off Gemma the last time out. Written by Akela Cooper and Gerard Johnstone, with Johnstone directing, M3gan 2.0 is a sci-fi horror that leans into worst-case scenarios surrounding AI, piling on the absurdities and borrowing heavily from the Terminator movies (Amelia is basically the Terminator decked out like Veronica Lake). It's all very silly, of course, but it's also enjoyably mindless fun. The Road to Patagonia The Road to Patagonia ★★★★☆ Theatrical release The Road to Patagonia (PG) is a documentary by Australian ecologist, surfer and filmmaker Matty Hannon, who set out to motorcycle from the northern tip of Alaska all the way to South America's southernmost cape. Along the way he meets the Canadian urban farmer Heather, swaps their motorcycles for horses, and embraces a variety of 'nature-based cultures' that the couple encounter on their epic trek. There's an seductive naivety to the central theme of rejecting neo-capitalism's evils in favour of a slower life more in tune with natural rhythms, one that calls to mind the work of Robert Pirsig or Robert Macfarlane as Matty and Heather traverse mountains, deserts, jungles and shorelines on their rollercoaster trip toward enlightenment. The scenery is fabulous and the couple are good company on an feelgood odyssey that is as gritty as it is idyllic. (theatrical release)
Los Angeles Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A charismatic Brad Pitt is the engine behind the loud and silly ‘F1'
The pleasures of 'F1' are engineered to bypass the brain. It's muscular and thrilling and zippy, even though at over two-and-a-half hours long, it has a toy dump truck's worth of plot. Sonny (Brad Pitt), a 50-something driver who spun out in the '90s, agrees to compete in the globe's most prestigious racing event to salvage his reputation and APX, the failing team of his buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem). What he's really chasing is a sense of fulfillment he can't, and won't, catch. It eludes him like a mechanical rabbit on a track. Directed by Joseph Kosinski from a script by Ehren Kruger, 'F1' has an amiable romance with a likable automotive engineer, Kate (Kerry Condon), and a bit of cautionary flag-waving about the financial shenanigans taking place off the track. But really, it's built from the same chassis as Kosinki's last movie, 'Top Gun: Maverick.' There's the A-list reckless elder, his upstart protegee (Damson Idris) and a high-octane mission that's damn near impossible, with lots of speedy action intercut with scenes of its alpha male movie star out of his helmet and grinning for fans. The film opens with a kinetic montage of Sonny's dreams. With a meditation tape on and old nightmares in his head, the images flicker between ocean waves and nerve-racking curves, from zen calm to zen focus. Sonny wakes up, blasts some Led Zeppelin and grabs the wheel at the Daytona Speedway where fireworks explode so close to his dashboard that Florida appears to be under attack. Editor Stephen Mirrione cheekily layers Robert Plant's ecstatic moans over a shot of a pit crew's air gun having its way with a set of lug nuts. Straightaway, the energy is so macho that it's almost corny. Embrace the tone while allowing the occasional eye roll at Brad Pitt's near-mythic modern-day Steve McQueen. Laconic, cocky, stubborn and unapologetic, he's a loner in a sport that requires teamwork. Drivers can't get anywhere without people eager to change all four of their tires in 2.9 seconds. Sonny must help APX place in the top 10 before investors like Banning (a disarmingly twinkly Tobias Menzies) fire the entire staff. His much younger teammate, Josh (Idris), is also on the chopping block but scoffs at Sonny as though he's Methuselah pushing the first stone wheel. 'He's old — like really old, like 80,' Josh grumbles to his mother, a scene-stealing Sarah Niles, who visibly disagrees: She looks at Sonny like a Popsicle on a hot day. Nevertheless, the squad needs to shift strategies and Sonny is here to take them from pathetic to aggressive. He gets a room of technicians to chant, 'Combat! Combat!' But the cars aren't great. When a Ferrari representative is asked what he thinks of APX, he replies, 'We don't.' In turn, the script barely thinks of Ferrari either, which feels especially brazen as the film was shot on location at nine Formula One Grand Prix events during the 2023 season, from Japan to Mexico to Abu Dhabi. There's priceless production value in watching Pitt do laps on the real tracks surrounded by real chaos, real drivers and real fans doing the wave. Still, it's a bit surreal to hear the announcers obsess over Sonny's high jinks in the back of the pack while ignoring the winners. The counterargument is that you can't make a villain out of that year's actual champion, Max Verstappen, when Sonny drives a lot like him. Both drivers share a nail-gnawing approach to safety that can feel dangerously close to a demolition derby. (Last year, F1 tweaked a rule so that one of his tactics here now results in a disqualification.) The film itself pulls a couple illegal moves, most gratingly when it orders us to care about Sonny's past spinal injury, only to pivot away from that plot point and show him hurtling over sand dunes. His one big monologue about what racing means to him doesn't land with any impact. But 'F1' is on firm ground watching Sonny shake up a sport that's become the world's most expensive game of chase. Technology has taken over with simulators and treadmills and sensors hunting for spare fractions of a second to eliminate. The film doesn't insult our intelligence by pretending all of these innovations are nonsense — they matter just as much as Sonny's mystical connection to the road. For balance, however, he and his love interest, Kate, bond over their old-school hobbies: He jogs, she bikes. Idris makes his rookie character bristly yet endearing, with the thin-skinned transparency of a generation raised to measure its worth in likes. Josh's aptly named manager, Cashman (Samson Kayo), pressures him to spend more time on social media, arguing that in today's plugged-in modern circuit, fame is as good of a career path as getting across the finish line first. I saw 'F1' in a screening that was predominantly influencers who didn't seem offended by the movie's disdain for vapid self-promotion. Sonny sneers every time he catches Josh doing a phony smile, even when the kid is simply posing for the advertisements they're both supposedly contracted to do. Instead, we were all swept up by the races themselves, which are honest-to-Goodyear fantastic. The cinematographer Claudio Miranda keeps the camera fast and low. Sometimes he fills the screen with road, other times he places the lens between the windshield and the wheel so all we can see is Pitt's gloved fist jerking around turns. The noises are energizing: tire squeals, engine rumbles and a hip soundtrack once it gets past the classic rock standards. To keep pace, Hans Zimmer has concocted a visceral new growl that rattles our seats. Race cars and blockbuster movies have a core thing in common: They're expensive contraptions made by teams who are painfully aware that they can fine-tune everything and still crash. The average Formula One car costs $20 million. Pitt's 'F1' salary was one-and-a-half times that (and the film's overall budget has been estimated between $200 and $300 million). As mechanized as a race — or a movie — can feel, success or failure hinge on the human element, the hero battling the gremlins in the machine. Unlike in his earlier 'Troy' years, Pitt is confident having a movie this massive built around him. Sonny is the closest he's come to circling back around to his breakout role in 'Thelma & Louise' as a charismatic cowboy scamp. For decades, he tried to wriggle out of that typecasting to play kooks and himbos. Every time he was advised to play the romantic hero, those roles seemed to pinch him around the collar. But Pitt's 2019 Oscar win as the stuntman Clint Booth in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' seems to have finally made him comfortable in the skin of a red-blooded sex symbol. At 61, he seems to have sprouted a new rung of abs. Yet, Pitt can't resist quirking up the character in ways that don't totally congeal. One scene, he's acting like the Marlboro Man; in another, he reveals a torso littered with doodly Gen-Z tattoos, including a cartoon hot dog shooting finger guns. If that's Sonny's sense of humor, there's no other evidence of it. I adored the costume designer Julian Day's avant-garde takes on a plain white shirt — fancy textures, loose Tyler Durden-esque cuffs — but couldn't imagine Sonny packing any of it in the worn duffel bag on his shoulder. Who cares? We're just here to watch Pitt go.
Japan Today
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
From bumper to bumper, 'F1' is Formula One spectacle
review By JAKE COYLE The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski's 'F1,' a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in 'Top Gun: Maverick,' has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on 'Maverick,' takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score. And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim. But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in 'F1,' has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.' In the opening scene of 'F1,' he's sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team's car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute. Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and 'F1' is off to the races. The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer's score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team's chief. Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series 'Formula 1: Drive to Survive' and the much-celebrated driver Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on 'F1.' Whether 'F1' pleases diehards I'll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski's films as well as wonders like Ang Lee's 'Life of Pi,' brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When 'F1' heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the U.K.'s fabled Silverstone Circuit. OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There's what I'd call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it's clear that he's going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that's in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs. This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he's limited by a role ultimately revolving around — and reducing to — a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic. A relationship does develop, but 'F1' struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt's Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' Condon is a rush of naturalism. If there's something preventing 'F1' from hitting full speed, it's its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny's motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from 'Grand Prix' to 'Senna' to 'Ferrari' — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine. 'F1' steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When 'F1' does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road 'F1' might have taken. 'F1,' an Apple Studios productions released by Warner Bros., is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong language and action. Running time: 155 minutes. Three stars out of four. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Hamilton Spectator
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Movie Review: From bumper to bumper, ‘F1' is Formula One spectacle
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski's 'F1,' a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in 'Top Gun: Maverick,' has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on 'Maverick,' takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score. And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim. But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt , who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in 'F1,' has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.' In the opening scene of 'F1,' he's sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team's car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute. Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and 'F1' is off to the races. The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer's score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team's chief. Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series 'Formula 1: Drive to Survive' and the much-celebrated driver Lewis Hamilton , an executive producer on 'F1.' Whether 'F1' pleases diehards I'll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski's films as well as wonders like Ang Lee's 'Life of Pi,' brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When 'F1' heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the U.K.'s fabled Silverstone Circuit. OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There's what I'd call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it's clear that he's going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that's in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs. This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he's limited by a role ultimately revolving around — and reducing to — a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic. A relationship does develop, but 'F1' struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt's Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' Condon is a rush of naturalism. If there's something preventing 'F1' from hitting full speed, it's its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny's motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from 'Grand Prix' to 'Senna' to 'Ferrari' — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine. 'F1' steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When 'F1' does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road 'F1' might have taken. 'F1,' an Apple Studios productions released by Warner Bros., is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong language and action. Running time: 155 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Winnipeg Free Press
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Movie Review: From bumper to bumper, ‘F1' is Formula One spectacle
The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski's 'F1,' a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor. Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in 'Top Gun: Maverick,' has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on 'Maverick,' takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score. And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim. But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in 'F1,' has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.' In the opening scene of 'F1,' he's sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team's car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute. Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and 'F1' is off to the races. The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer's score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team's chief. Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series 'Formula 1: Drive to Survive' and the much-celebrated driver Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on 'F1.' Whether 'F1' pleases diehards I'll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski's films as well as wonders like Ang Lee's 'Life of Pi,' brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When 'F1' heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the U.K.'s fabled Silverstone Circuit. OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There's what I'd call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it's clear that he's going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that's in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs. This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he's limited by a role ultimately revolving around — and reducing to — a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic. A relationship does develop, but 'F1' struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt's Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' Condon is a rush of naturalism. If there's something preventing 'F1' from hitting full speed, it's its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny's motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from 'Grand Prix' to 'Senna' to 'Ferrari' — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine. 'F1' steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When 'F1' does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road 'F1' might have taken. 'F1,' an Apple Studios productions released by Warner Bros., is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong language and action. Running time: 155 minutes. Three stars out of four.
