F1 The Movie

Brad Pitt plays a former F1 driver whose entire life is a washout and now lives in a van and goes from town to town trying to win various types of races. 

It’s not about the money, he says when anyone offers him any money to drive. 

Well what’s it about then? They ask. 

And when they do that Pitt gives them a laconic movie star smile. 

So, Pitt’s not playing a human being in this flick — he’s a myth. An old gunslinger who’s trying to prove to himself and the world that he’s still the fastest guy in the west. 

While everyone else presumably walks through doors to get to the F1 team center Pitt will just appear on racetracks and do a cowboy walk toward his crew in jeans, boots and his pack on his back. 

Is it ridiculous? My god yes. But Director Joseph Kosinski’s has a great reason to do it this way. That reason? 

The cowboy walk looks cool as hell. 

If anybody else did this you would laugh your ass off. But when Brad Pitt does it … I believe. 

Damson Idris does a great job as The Kid who has lessons to learn from the old cowboy. Kerry Condon is too good an actress to be playing The Girl but she’s here anyway and she does a fine job with it. 

Javier Bardem is the Town Marshall (team owner) who needs the gunslinger’s help. The movie spends a little time with a slimy bad guy and no time at all with the other drivers who are just minor obstacles on the way to Pitt’s final glory. 

As a movie this is all fine. If you see it on your iPad in a month you will wonder what anyone thought was good about it. As an IMAX spectacle it rumbles and it’s glorious. 

I saw it at 10 p.m. on a summer night in Panama City Beach with a crowd of high school and college kids who all knew each other and took up the last four rows. 

They yelled all through the trailers but if they talked through the movie I couldn’t hear them over the sound of squealing tires and crushed metal and a thumping rock soundtrack. 

When it was over I couldn’t help but hear them celebrating as we walked out. 

My ultimate review is the same as one of them who turned to his pal and said, “That movie was peak, bro.”