F1 The Movie
Having been an F1 fan for decades, I thought it was worth going out of our way to catch this one, even if I wasn't expecting all that much from it. I was pleasantly surprised, it's a solid summer blockbuster. It has fun characters, funny bits of dialogue, great music, and it looks good. Pitt's character is too old for any of this to be realistic, although they do a great job of showing how his character contributes through things other than outright speed, and it's not really any less realistic than Hollywood normal and probably more realistic than Top Gun: Maverick and it didn't stop that being great. The mixture of real F1 and the fictional story is kind of fascinating, you can see real events from the season mixed with their cars, which is both grounding and confusing for the film. It plays plenty of homage to real details of F1, although aficionados will notice several places the rules don't work like that, and Sony Hayes is an appallingly dirty driver who I'm pretty sure would have been banned by season's end. The accidents are also both more frequent and more dramatic than the ones in real F1 - but it's a film, of course, it isn't bang on realistic: most Hollywood films are taking more liberties than this. It's hardly stacked with surprises, but it delivers predictable beats in slightly unpredictable ways and doesn't outstay its welcome despite a two and a half hour run time.
8/10 Switch off your brain and enjoy the show.
