Empty “F1: The Movie” Still Dazzles
Written by: George W. Campbell | June 26th, 2025
F1: The Movie (Joseph Kosinski, 2025) 3 out of 5 stars
Let me preface this review by saying that the racing scenes in F1: The Movie are fantastic. As a longtime fan of director Joseph Kosinski’s work, I am happy to say that he nails the thrill of rushing down a track at 200 MPH. He builds upon the visual language of previous racing films like Grand Prix, Le Mans, and Speed Racer, by mounting cameras directly onto and inside the cars. His sound design elevates the visuals and places you right in the cockpit. If you have the chance to experience this in IMAX, I highly recommend it. Nevertheless. despite its amazing spectacle, F1: The Movie, as a whole, runs into severe storytelling issues and leans on old sports-movie tropes to fill in gaps.
Our protagonist, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt, Wolfs), is a retired Formula 1 driver, now working season to season on any track he can find. After Sonny makes a standout performance at the 24 Hours of Daytona, his former teammate, Ruben (Javier Bardem, The Little Mermaid), makes him an offer too good to be true. Ruben now owns an F1 team, APX GP, but they’ve spent half of the season in last place. If APX doesn’t place in the top ten by season’s end, Ruben will have to sell the team. But with Sonny’s help, they might stand a chance. Sonny is skeptical at first but eventually joins the team, much to the chagrin of his rookie teammate, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris, Hulu’s Snowfall series).

From that point forward, Sonny is an agent of chaos. He openly criticizes APX’s car designs, disobeys direct orders, and bends F1’s rules of conduct as far as possible. But his maverick style gets results and APX finds themselves moving on up the leaderboard. The problem is that despite F1 having a stacked ensemble, Sonny gets the majority of screentime. While we learn a bit about Sonny’s backstory, that same attention is not given to the rest of the cast. Their purpose in the script is to initially doubt Sonny’s methods before realizing what a genius he is.
The biggest example of this is Joshua, who’s introduced as the brash, arrogant youth needing to be humbled by the old-timer. While he is admittedly immature, Joshua is given less space to grow as a character. At one point, he tells Sonny that he had to “climb a mountain” to get to F1, which Sonny just dismisses. His attitude sidesteps Joshua’s years of hard work and sacrifice. Joshua’s whole arc then becomes about rejecting the modern technology he trains with and embracing Sonny’s old-school tactics. Similarly, Kate (Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin), the team’s technical director, is introduced as a brilliant, opinionated professional who sees through Sonny’s “lone wolf” shtick. But by the third act, she can no longer resist his charms and regresses into a fangirl (in fact, this film fails the Bechdel Test in spectacular fashion). Every character is designed in service of Sonny’s brilliance, or more specifically, Brad Pitt (who is also an executive producer).

I sincerely wish that the rest of F1 lived up to its best moments, but it lacks the sincerity and cohesiveness of other racing films like Rush or Ford v Ferrari; the characters aren’t as memorable, falling into easy narrative beats. If F1 spent more time showing why these people actually race, it might have become a classic. As is, it’s more of an ego trip. It will definitely exhilarate audiences but may not move them.