If Top Gun: Maverick proved anything, it's that Joseph Kosinski knows how to craft compelling action sequences. With a thrilling sweep through the sky, Kosinski placed us in the midst of Maverick and his team. The experience was exhilarating; it was almost impossible to look away from the screen. With F1, Kosinski brings the same energetic momentum to the ground - literally. Though the fighter jets are replaced with cars, the director's sense of speed remains astonishing. There is kinetic energy in the F1 races - they get your heart pumping. Kosinski has a genuine affection for engines and machines. He displays them with such passionate feelings that humans, in comparison, can seem a little limp. As long as the vehicles move, you are lost in the Kosinski Magic. But when these engines are turned off, nothing else seems worth watching on the screen. When the board member of APXGP, Peter Banning (Tobias Menzies), tells someone that he has offered them the best seat to view the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, you smile because these words belong to Kosinski. He provides us with the best view; he takes us into close proximity. We are sometimes inside the car and sometimes just above it. During the final lap of the final match, we see the track through Sonny Hayes's (Brad Pitt) eyes.
Who is Sonny? A lone wolf, a nomad, an aging American driver who lives in his van. Thank god he's played by Brad Pitt, who brings a lot of charisma to a thin role and keeps the film afloat for much of the time. Sonny loves his cars. He derives great pleasure from the thrill he gets while racing, so much so that he doesn't care for the awards, publicity, trophy. He doesn't even touch his prize. Sonny belongs to that breed of humans who have an immense love for their jobs. They don't care about fame and money. The rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) is the polar opposite. He is concerned with social media engagement, photo shoots, and brand deals. He is in for fame, money, and glory. Unlike Sonny, Joshua doesn't mind smiling for the cameras, and he is cautious about maintaining his image in front of all the journalists. He even has a PR guy (Samson Kayo). There is friction in the air when these two opposite forces collide. Kosinski, though, never allows this friction to escalate into palpable tension. The few casual-sounding jibes (Joshua: "When was the last time you won a race?" Sonny: "Sunday, Daytona." Joshua: "Oh, I am sorry. I meant Formula 1." Sonny: "Oh, I am sorry. Then, same as you.") are smooth and effectively convey the feelings these two racers have for each other, though they stop short of generating real drama, stress, or anxiety. Sonny tells Joshua that stardom, acclaim, popularity are nothing but noise. However, Kosinski himself doesn't heed this advice. He craves stardom, acclaim, and popularity (his eyes are on the box office), which is why F1 is built like a well-oiled machine that follows conventional tropes fluidly.
Writer Ehren Kruger doesn't "burden the audience" with details and backstories. The characters are reduced to a set of easily digestible traits, attached like Post-it notes to serve clarity over complexity. Sonny's Post-it note reads, "reckless, loyal, melancholic, daring, divorcee." A journalist lays down Sonny's past in the form of bullet points. After being seriously injured at the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix, he became a gambling addict. He also had a girlfriend and was married twice, but these relationships ended eventually. What was the cause of the breakup? His gambling habits? His failure to fully commit to the relationship? Or did those women not like Sonny's risk-taking approach to driving? When Joshua sees a YouTube video to better understand Sonny, no new information comes to light. The video doesn't reveal anything that we didn't already grasp up to this point. Oh, by the way, Joshua's Post-it note reads "ambitious," and Kerry Condon's Kate, the technical director, is a "hard worker and divorcee." She is good-looking, and so is Sonny; naturally, they flirt and hook up at some point. Kosinski knows he's working with archetypes, which is why he hires stars to power up his mechanical device.
All this makes F1 easy on the eyes, but there is no real engagement with the characters and their pain and objectives. We don't actually root for them. Yet, we are engaged due to the technical prowess with which Kosinski films the cars; he almost puts us into the driver's seat. When a car crashes, flips in the air and catches fire, we don't think about the driver. We gasp because Kosinski offers a sudden jolt - he pushes the right button at the right time. And if we cheer for Sonny at the end, that's because of the director's filmmaking. He envelops us in a trance-like silence and then suddenly amps up the volume to provide a feeling of excitement and victory. Kosinski is a master manipulator of emotions, and F1 has garnered a lot of acclaim due to the tendency of the mass audience to praise films that make them feel things. Critics, on the other hand, sit through so much green screen detritus that anything that doesn't look CGI-generated automatically becomes something worth cherishing; however, the air show we see before the final match seems to be generated artificially. F1 is indeed an exciting compilation of Grand Prix events where the engines sing. The people, on the other hand, are like mannequins. They just exist. The main attraction is the race scenes, which are shot wonderfully. As far as Kosinski is concerned, the "F" in F1 stands for Fantastic.
Final Score- [5.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times