F1                           3 ½ stars

Summer is here and with it comes the time of the summer blockbuster. Leading the way is F1, the very loud and action-filled movie about life on a Formula 1 racing team, the most prestigious motor sport in the world. And of course, a blockbuster must have an A list actor for the lead. Filling that role is Brad Pitt, looking his usual rugged and laid-back self as Sonny Hayes, a veteran driver who gave up the Formula 1 circuit long ago after being injured in a horrifying accident. (Pitt was last seen in last year’s Wolfs which I have not seen.) A blockbuster racing movie also requires plenty of camera shots of fast cars maneuvering around one another and shots from inside the cars showing the intensity of the drivers, all with the roar of the engines filling the room and an announcer describing the action. F1 has all this plus a story of two drivers on the same team often at odds with one another. Hayes is the sixty something veteran who has all the experience and confidence needed to win, while young Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris) is the rookie who has the right stuff but needs the experience. It is the owner, Rueben (Javier Bardem of Dune and Being the Ricardos) who convinces Sonny to come back to the race circuit and save his losing and nearly bankrupt team, APX. Thus, the drama revolves around these two drivers and the team as Sonny has to learn that it takes a team to win and it can’t be up to just one man. F1 deviates from the formula of most racing movies such as Ford v. Ferrari as there is no character portraying the opposition. The other cars and drivers are for the most part nameless faces that furnish the background without being a part of the story. And since APX is one of the worst teams on the track, their objective is not really to win a race, but just to be in the top 10 finishers. So, the premise is not what I am used to in a movie about race car drivers. Some of Sonny’s moves on the track would seem questionable. It’s hard to imagine him not being disqualified for them in a real race. Pitt is naturally at home in the role of the handsome, solemn veteran who can handle whatever is thrown at him, except perhaps for the lasting effects of the injuries he suffered years before. The movie does include a couple of subplots to give it some depth beyond the racing. The team’s technical director is Kate (Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon of The Banshees of Inisherin), an Irish woman who is an expert in her field of designing race car components. She has a few run ins with Sonny, not necessarily confined to race cars. And there is a member of the team’s board who may not share the interests of the team’s owner and seems to have his own agenda. The race scenes are exciting, but viewers who are not familiar with the jargon or the significance of changing the tires for varying conditions may find these scenes confusing. F1 is not my favorite racing movie, but for the action, it is worth seeing. It is of course a good one for Brad Pitt fans to check out too.