Hope is not a strategy

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2025

#13 :  F1

It may not reinvent the wheel (sorry), but this nitro-boosted blockbuster is an old-school thrill-ride which successfully ports across much of Top Gun: Maverick’s vibes and style. One wonders if it was originally intended as a Maverick-style sequel to Days Of Thunder (’Days Of Thunder: Trickle?’), to star Tom Cruise. Instead, we get a laconic Brad Pitt as a 200mph underdog, vying against the cream of F1’s drivers — plus his own teammate, an excellent Damon Idris — and deploying all sorts of cunning tricks to out-velocity superior hardware. Bolting cameras onto 16 different parts of a car, Joseph Kosinski again delivers visceral spectacle, making you feel like you’re genuinely inside a modified Dallara F2 2018. But unlike Days Of Thunder, the off-track drama delivers too, with a bunch of likeable characters, and a hissable villain courtesy of Tobias Menzies. Plus, you get Martin Brundle and David Croft commentating, explaining what the hell’s going on and why those tyres are important. Cheers, chaps!

I've heard decent things about this but there would be no danger of me watching it under normal circumstances - particularly because it's 2.5 hours long.

Well, the first thing to say is that this is a fine film to look at - there's a whole load of quality built all the way through it. But does that make it a good film? Well, to answer that we probably need to consider it on several fronts...

Let's start on the technical front - because if they can't get that right they'll really be in trouble. And, to no-one's surprise, they do it well - there are cameras everywhere and they give fine blanket coverage, and at speed. I can't even begin to claim to understand how they took half the shots they did - and that's before you begin to consider all the other drivers and cars involved (although maybe don't watch this if you expecting to actually see any real F1 drivers - apparently they are in it, but they generally keep their race gear on). It also sounds great, winning the Academy Award for Best Sound.

So - where to next? Let's go with the actors, because I can't say really say anything bad about them either. Brad is very Brad in this - Empire gets it right with "laconic".  And Damson Idris does a good job as his young and inexperienced team partner - they're a decent pairing, not least because they both manage to come across as arseholes, but still likeable. I'm also going to give Kerry Condon a shout-out because it would have been easy for her to play her role by the numbers as a token presence on at least two fronts, but somehow she seems to hold things together and deliver an awful lot more than you feel was written for her on the page.

There's a very decent supporting cast in this - Javier Bardem (not stretching his acting chops in the slightest), Tobias Menzies (twirling his moustache in a caddish fashion) and Kim Bodnia all do a good job. I'm also going to call out Sarah Niles and Callie Cooke as pretty much the only other women in this (and Callie is REALLY not pushing any feminist boundaries here). 

And it's interesting to mention Sarah Niles, who's probably best known as the psychologist in Ted Lasso, because although they REALLY want this film to be Top Gun:Maverick in cars, there's a good argument that it's really Ted Lasso in cars with an American coming over here without really knowing much about the sport and he has to fit into an existing team whilst making all sorts of cultural errors which annoy people but also make them consider their place.

However, whilst you know where Ted Lasso is going to end, there are various twists and turns along the way to surprise you - but they don't bother with any of that nonsense here. It goes exactly where you expect it to go - it must have taken them all of five minutes to storyboard it up. And that's not the end of my concerns with the story because there plenty of sections which, while you believe they are probably realistic, are surprisingly boring - and the exciting bits, whilst are definitely exciting, are completely unbelievable to anyone with even a vague passing knowledge of F1 (which includes me). Unfortunately, I suspect that the more you know about F1, the less you'll enjoy the film because you'll just find yourself repeatedly rolling your eyes (the Wikipedia entry has an amusing list of quotes from reviews by the motorsport media - it's fair to say they weren't impressed).

However, as a whole, I'd say they just about get away with it as a way to pass the time - even if, at 2:35, it really tries its hardest to outstay its welcome. It's technically impressive, well acted and an enjoyable (if completely predictable) storyline - and there's no denying plenty of people have watched it because it enjoyed an impressive run actually in theatres which is rare enough these days, and doubly so for a film made by a streaming service (Apple). Which gives us a nice bit of trivia - at $630m, it's Brad Pitt's highest grossing film (overtaking World War Z, which I would never have guessed in a million years). I'm not 100% convinced all of that would be enough for me to include it on my year-end list (or even watch it under normal circumstances), but I though it was fine enough to watch provided I switched my brain off - it's available on Apple TV and I'm sure there are plenty worse films there you could pick instead.

#14 - Enjoyably bonkers