Tag: auto racing

F1 – Review

Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes in Apple Original Films’ “F1® The Movie,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Scott Garfield. Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures / Apple Original Films. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

If you are looking for a perfect summer movie, F1 maybe your ticket. Little is more exciting to watch than F1 racing, even if you know nothing about the sport. F1 THE MOVIE stars Brad Pitt and delivers all the exciting race sequences your could want while also taking you inside that racing world, with footage shot at actual F1 races, in a taut, stylish action tale. Directed by Joseph Kosinki, who helmed TOP GUN: MAVERICK, F1 has all the excitement and thrills of that film but adds in a more polished visual style.

Race cars were born with automobiles themselves, and F1 is the highest-level, most exciting, and classiest form of auto racing, with custom-built and designed cars from the likes of Ferrari, and raced on courses built on streets of famous cities around the world. Movies have a strong tradition of F1 auto racing movies, with several thrilling classics like GRAND PRIX, RUSH and SENNA, and I confess I’ve been hooked on movies about F1 auto racing movies ever since seeing one as a kid. F1 is the elite, international level of auto racing, a whole different world from the Indy 500 and other NASCAR racing, which uses customized version of production cars and simple oval tracks. F1’s custom-build racing cars are designed for racing only, stripped down to the bare but high-powered racing essentials, and with races on twisty, complicated courses, calling for a different level of driving skill.

Filming at actual F1 races, with real drivers and figures from F1 in minor roles, and lead actors doing their own driving gives the film an authentic feel. Fans of F1 will get a charge out of the authenticity but there is no need to know anything about F1 to enjoy this summer-perfect, thrilling movie ride.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, who was once a promising F1 driver until a devastating accident cut his career short. Now, Sonny is a freelance driver, picking up race car assignments around the country and living in his RV. Still, Sonny is still has top driving skills, and coming off a win at the Indy 500, he turns down offers to join racing teams, preferring to maintain his wandering lifestyle. When an old teammate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), who owns a struggling F1 team called Apex, drops in to recruit Sonny as a driver, Sonny reluctantly agrees to help his old friend. Ruben has a talented young driver with a bright future, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) but needs a more experienced driver to help him gain experience.

Pearce is a cocky hotshot from a British working-class immigrant background, and resents having Sonny or anyone else offering advice, so the two of them don’t hit it off. Pearce thinks of Sonny as a has-been or worse,, never-been, because of his short-circuited F1 career, while Hayes describes the young driver as arrogant, hot-headed and with a lot to learn, when talking to Ruben. “Just like you were,” Ruben responses.

Yet the two do find a way to work together as a team, and along with improvements by the team’s car designer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), things start to look up. Meanwhile, Ruben is under pressure from Apex’s board of directors, who are threatening to sell the company if Ruben’s team doesn’t start winning. Ruben’s ally on the board, (Tobias Menzies) keeps Ruben updated on what the board is doing.

The plot is classic Hollywood, the old hand and the young gun, but the script by Ehren Kruger adds plenty of twists and surprises to keep us guessing. Brad Pitt gives an excellent performance in this role as the elusive Sonny, looking good at 61 years old, fit but a bit craggy. His character is independent and crafty, laying down a strategy for winning but rarely sharing his plan with the rest of the team before hand. Sonny and designer Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), a former aerospace engineer and the only woman auto designer in F1, have romantic sparks as soon as they meet, but they are restrained by their own better professional and personal judgment. Still, that restraint erodes over time, unsurprisingly, and Pitt and Condon work well together, with a playful sexy chemistry in the love interest addition. Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem are fantastic in scenes together, with good supporting work from Damson Idris as the cocky young driver and Tobias Menzies as a smiling, slippery board member.

While Brad Pitt is great, the real star of this show are the racing sequences, which are brilliantly done and thrilling to watch. The action photography by Claudio Miranda is stylish, and the races, which are gripping and even a bit frightening, are further elevated by Hans Zimmer’s score. Both Pitt and Idris did their own driving for the film, and many scenes were shot at actual F1 races and with real F1 drivers making appearances, and with the cooperation of the F1 sporting organization.

It all adds up. F1 is a perfect summer movie, a thrilling tale set in an exciting world of high-octane racing, with top-rate action, fine photography and polished production values, and a first-rate cast in a classic Hollywood tale.

F1 opens Friday, June 27, in theaters.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

FERRARI – Review

And what’s that zooming toward the multiplex? Why, it’s yet another true-life sports film, and it’s comin’ in hot. Yes, it’s a whole lot faster than the rowing movie, as it is set in the world of auto racing. And unlike the other racing flick this year, GRAN TURISMO, there’s no video gaming involved as the bulk of it takes place over sixty-five years ago. Oh, and the director of this new film has been making some of the most interesting and stylish action epics over the last five decades. He’s focused on one year in a man’s life synonymous with the sport, so it could be considered a biography. Even after all this time that name resonates throughout the world in general. Sure it’s now a brand name, but behind all the iconic autos was the man named Enzo FERRARI.

This profile begins with newsreel-style footage of Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) churning up the dirt raceway in the 1920s. Flash forward to 1957, as he awakens and joins Lina (Shailene Woodley) for breakfast with their eight-year-old son Piero. He says goodbye but doesn’t go directly to his auto factory. Instead, he stops at the crypt of his late son Alfredo (‘Dino’) and the home he shares with his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz). Of course, she knows nothing of Enzo’s second family, perhaps owing to Italy’s ban on divorce in the day. Enzo’s arrival precedes a heated argument ending with her firing a pistol (later one would end with kitchen tabletop lovemaking). It’s a big day at Ferrari S.p.A, as a new racer, Alfonso De Portiago (Gabriel Leone) joins the company team before the next big road race. And much to Enzo’s chagrin, his movie starlet girlfriend Linda Christian (Sarah Gadon) steals some of the fanfare. He appears to have a complex relationship with the press. Enzo despises the “paparazzi” for trying to pry into his personal life, but uses them to plant rumors, like a possible merger with Ford Motors, in order to generate much-needed cash. Seems the company is teetering toward bankruptcy, which forces Enzo to make risky loans with banks and even barter with Laura over shares of the family company. Ah, but all will work out when his team wins the highly-touted race, Mille Miglia, which runs over several miles of public roads throughout Italy. But what would happen if disaster and death take the wheel?

In the title role, Driver (nice coincidence) is quite intimidating as the looming, passionate auto maven. he conveys a man completely focused on his profession, down to the smallest bit of machinery, while also juggling every penny of his company’s dwindling funds. But his best juggling is in his double life. With Lina and Piero he’s a warm nurturing patriarch, doting on his boy while frustrating his mother. But with Laura, he never quite knows what’s behind their home’s front entrance. Like the old fable, is it “the lady or the tiger”? As Laura, Cruz has a fierce bite along with her ultra-sharp claws, as she suspects that Enzo has “something on the side”, while she she to reign in his spending excesses. But Cruz also shows us that the wounds of losing a son have never healed as she lashed at him to unload her smothering grief. As the “other woman” Woodley shows us the defiant attitude that is tempered with a lingering affection for Enzo, paired with a sense of shame for having to exist “in the shadows”.As for team Ferrari, Leone oozes with machismo charm as the new “darling of the tabloids, while another charmer, Patrick Dempsey, conveys an easygoing demeanor as veteran “pedal man” Piero Taruffi.

Oh, the director mentioned above (who also serves as co-producer and “script doctor”) is the talented Michael Mann in his first sports biopic since ALI. He’s worked in many movie genres, but Mann may be best known for his action epic. That skill suits him well in this true tale, particularly in the “signature scene” that will leave audiences stunned. Some critics of auto racing believe it’s an excuse to witness a disaster, and since the film is based on real events, it happens here. Kudos to Mann for not “sugarcoating” the shocking horror of it all by “cutting away” or making it abstract or “dreamy”. The ‘blink of an eye” carnage and its aftermath will have viewers gasping and perhaps a bit shaken. Hopefully, the power of this sequence doesn’t detract from the strength of the quieter scenes like Enzo talking about racing skills with as son, or the haunting montage of the drivers preparing “goodbye letters’ for their loved ones on the night before the big race (and finding a spot for the envelopes to be discovered). The verbal sparring between Enzo and Laura verges on becoming a repetitive cycle, and we’re often not sure of Enzo’s intentions, especially in his relationship with Lina (despite the brawling there’s more heat with Laura). this is offset by the superb cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt, the expert period recreations (fashion, decor, and hairstyles), the gorgeous Italian locations, and some terrific insider info on the sport (I wasn’t aware of the two-man driving teams). Though it occasionally veers off the track, there is lots of super-charged power in the world of FERRARI.

3 out of 4

FERRARI opens in theatres everywhere on Christmas Day 2023