Due to what I imagine is some sort of copyright issue, members of the press (that’s me!) have been instructed to only refer to F1® The Movie as such, complete with the Restricted sign and “The Movie.” This way nobody gets the movie confused with the sport itself when they visit movie website and read a movie review by a movie critic who has never once watched any sort of professional car race in his whole life, but who is pretty much always watching movies. But since I’m a very silly man and the little Restricted logo is annoying to copy and paste from other sources (there’s no key for it on my keyboard), I’ve decided to henceforth refer to the movie as Pitt Stop, on account of it starring Brad Pitt and featuring multiple scenes where his character makes a literal pit stop. It’s better for everyone this way, and it allows me to put a stupid joke into print, which is one of the benefits of being a fully independent film critic. I get to do whatever I want and you can’t stop me.
In a lot of ways, I’m like legendary racer Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), who, after a career-ending wreck, has spent the past few years gambling and freelance driving to finance his nomadic life. He loves out of his van, and he loves to drive cars really fast more than anything in the world. So much so that he has three ex-wives and an outlook on life based solely around driving cars really fast. This is why he’s the perfect candidate to step into an empty slot in a struggling racing team and act as a mentor for up-and-comer Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). What follows is a film that sticks to formula, goes around in circles, and spends a lot of its runtime wheel-spinning.
See what I did there?
lol sorry, I’m really sick and I’ve been riding the NyQuil/DayQuil train for a few days and I’m a bit loopy. You understand.
What actually follows is an exciting, dumb film that feels like a throwback to old-school crowd-pleasing blockbusters in both good and bad ways. The good: it’s exciting as all hell, the racing looks incredible, and the film has an extremely warm heart. The bad: it’s a film with absolutely nothing to say, despite featuring many opportunities to do so. It makes the safe decision at every turn (this is not a racing pun), leading to a predictable film that doubles as a commercial for the sport and for Pitt himself. In a lot of ways it’s similar to director Joseph Kosinski’s previous film Top Gun: Maverick in that it takes pains to make sure it’s appealing to the broadest audience possible, while existing outside of any sort of contemporary setting that would inform the story. Maverick has its nameless, faceless villains, and its rock n’ roll protagonist while Pitt Stop has all of the ingredients to tell a resonant story about celebrity, privilege, and ego, but which instead chooses to be mostly about how you can drive really fast if you have enough heart to drive really fast. It also helps if you’re a Cool Guy™️.
And there’s nothing wrong with that! But it feels like a missed opportunity. That said, in a film landscape that has spent the past few years so focused on beating us over the head with messaging that the task of making a functioning movie is often forgotten (I’m looking at you Hidden Figures), it’s understandable that we’d be getting some blockbusters that, in response, are aggressively about nothing.
One day we’ll find a middle ground, although that wouldn’t be very American of us.
But man oh man, despite the broad story that chronicles the safest and least thematically satisfying path a film can take, those cars sure do go vroom vroom rullll nice.
Director/co-writer Joseph Kosinski knows how to make big screen action sing, and Pitt Stop is no exception. The production quite literally had its stars and stunt performers zip around in race cars with cameras attached to the inside and outside of the vehicle, allowing for a completely immersive sensory experience that demands a premium theater format. This method makes for hyper-kinetic visuals that ratchet up the excitement without ever losing clarity, and it’s all bolstered by some of the best sound design you’ll ever hear (as long as you can ignore the announcers who explain the rules of racing every time something new happens so that non-savvy viewers can tell what’s going on — appreciated but unnecessary).
There’s an attempt to turn this into an ensemble piece, with small arcs given to supporting characters, and while all are compelling enough, the script doesn’t do anything with these plot lines but allow them to function on a surface level. Which, again, is fine. But I was hoping to be a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ by the end, and instead I was like “ok cool, this is neat, vroom vroom!”
It’s a shame because all the pieces for a great movie are here. The relationship between Hayes and Pearce is primed for a stimulating rivalry between teammates, but it’s resolved before ever really being utilized. Kerry Condon’s turn as a brilliant and unconventional automobile designer/tech pays lip service to the sexism she faces in a male-dominated sport … but her character seems to exist only as a romantic conquest for Brad Pitt. Even Javier Bardem, who can’t help but to dominate the screen, isn’t given much to do. Add to that a late in the movie addition of an undeveloped villain, and it all just feels like so much data crammed between the stuff we all really came to see. Luckily, that stuff delivers in a big way.
And why the FUCK was this not released on Father’s Day weekend?!?!?
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Written by Joseph Kosinski, Ehren Kruger
Starring Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem, Damson Idris
Rated PG-13, 155 minutes
