When you think of Formula One, what exactly do you think of? Fast cars, talented drivers, a rich atmosphere, grand prix racing, and more. When you look at a driver, you expect luxury. A supercar-owning man who lives in a nice house with a girlfriend or wife. But the F1 movie takes a different approach.
The Movie first plays what seems like a memory of the protagonist, Sonny Hayes, played by Brad Pitt, in his Camel Formula One car. He was driving against Ayrton Senna. He then crashes, showing a small amount of his backstory. Then, the scene cuts to Daytona. This is a great opening for a movie about racing in general. In Daytona, the 24 Hours of Daytona is taking place, which is a multiclass race held by an endurance racing series named IMSA.
The protagonist, Sonny Hayes, is shown training in his mobile home, listening to music, doing pull-ups, and normal Racing Driver things. Sonny Hayes then gets called out because it’s his turn to race. He exits his mobile home, walks over to the pit wall, and begins to prepare to race. As he gets in, the feeling of racing is instantly there. The sounds of the cars, the movements of the cars, the cinematic steering, it’s all there, and it looks incredibly realistic. Sonny gets into a battle with a BMW, which he outbrakes on a corner and manages to overtake, making the BMW make a mistake and spin out. He gets through scot-free and manages to win the race of the 24 hour Daytona race. He doesn’t celebrate and instead goes back into his mobile home and drives away after getting his cut of a paycheck for winning and driving for the team.
This is an incredible opening for a racing movie, as it gets to the point instantly. It shows the protagonist’s past, and gives the viewer a great representation of what’s to come for the actual Formula One Racing. It gives your first sense of speed and focus, really showing what these drivers have to go through in order to really drive these very fast machines to win.
But as the movie continues, they try to make a story for each character, but it feels like everything is shown too fast.
Every single character is well written in the moment, but all of their stories don’t exist or barely exist. Their backstories don’t have a lot of screen time. They tend to only focus on Sonny, which can confuse the watcher, as the other characters, like Sonny’s team, have large or equally large roles in the whole movie.
A great example of this is his teammate, Joshua Pearce. He has so much screen time, nearly the whole movie, but his backstory and overall story are lackluster. The great thing about his character is his upcoming and maturing during the movie, as Sonny is almost like a Master Oogway type of character towards Joshua.
One thing that can definitely be said about this absolutely perfect movie is the cinematography. Oh days, the cinematography is absolutely incredible. A similar feeling driving karts that would shoot up to 45 miles an hour on a tight race track. And when this movie captured the moments of speed that the drivers were feeling, it’s like you could feel like you we’re in the car with them. Even if you have no racing experience, you can really feel the speed due to the camera angles and different shots of the cars. It felt like you were Sonny Hayes or Joshua Pearce at some points of the movie.
The audio is also incredible; even if you have terrible speakers, you can tell that’s what the cars are supposed to sound exactly like. The F1 cars today have that punchy and low growl that has a whiny turbocharger that adds a symphony of low and light. With every upshift and downshift, it sounds like the V6 is singing in ecstasy. They capture this sound perfectly in the movie, making the cars sound punchy and realistic. Even the Porsche GT3 at the start of the movie sounded incredible. As you could hear the whiny straight cut gears in the cockpit, while outshone, it sounded low and punchy as the Flat 6 of the Porsche would click and roar with every gear change and RPM fluctuation.
Overall, you had to watch this movie for the racing and action, as everything was super fast-paced, yet there were so many moments of racing. It felt fast, but showed you so much of the actual racing. The driving, the sound, and the looks of everything were incredible.
It captures the emotion and euphoric-like feeling of racing super well. There should be more movies like this with better stories coming out in the future. This was barely disappointing in the slightest when it came to immersion.
This would wholeheartedly recommend this movie if you are an F1 or racing fan in general.
