FILM OF THE WEEK: F1 - Reviewed by Roe McDermott

Brad Pitt has spent recent years trying to coast through a reputational rebuild; despite serious allegations of violence during his marriage to Angelina Jolie, and the striking fact that all six of his children have reportedly cut contact with him, public scrutiny around his behaviour has remained curiously muted. F1, his latest star vehicle, appears designed to reinforce his status as a heroic, magnetic figure - an aging icon with wisdom to impart, charisma undiminished, and a past blurred enough to avoid discomfort. It is a film about legacy and second chances, one that insists on emotional payoff while asking little of its lead actor in terms of depth or vulnerability.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun:Maverick, Oblivion) and written by Ehren Kruger, F1 follows Sonny Hayes (Pitt), a retired Formula One driver coaxed back into the paddock to help revive a flailing team. Once a star at the peak of the sport, Sonny now exists on the margins, floating between minor consulting jobs, card games, and mythologised anecdotes, until he’s approached by Ruben (Javier Bardem), a theatrical and effusive team owner who believes Sonny is the key to saving his underperforming crew. The offer comes with a condition: Sonny must mentor a rising talent, the young and impatient Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), who meets him with open hostility and an eye-roll of a nickname - “grandpa" -  before gradually, inevitably, softening into admiration.

Pitt plays Sonny with the same blend of charm, detachment, and enigmatic cool that has defined much of his late-career screen persona; his performance is polished, familiar, and watchable, but curiously vacant. While the script gestures toward a past shaped by trauma -a near-fatal crash, implied personal losses- it resists exploring those events with any specificity or weight. There are moments that seem poised for emotional revelation, scenes that should crack open the surface calm to reveal something messier or more human, yet instead we get a deflective smirk or a clipped line of dialogue, as though the very idea of vulnerability might scuff the carefully preserved myth of the character. Rather than inhabit Sonny’s emotional world, Pitt appears content to suggest it, relying on charisma and cinematic shorthand in place of actual transformation.

Damson Idris, in contrast, brings texture and tension to his role, despite being underserved by the script’s formulaic arc. As Pearce, he captures the prickliness and insecurity of a young athlete navigating the pressures of fame, talent, and institutional suspicion; his frustration with Sonny, while predictable in narrative terms, feels rooted in something real, and when his character begins to evolve, it carries more emotional credibility than the film seems to anticipate. Idris finds in Pearce a sense of internal life that pushes against the film’s slick surfaces, hinting at the stakes and stress that elite sport demands, especially for a young Black driver constantly reminded of how replaceable he is.

The most compelling presence in the film, however, is our own Kerry Condon, whose performance as Kate McKenna, the team’s technical director, brings a necessary sense of grounding and emotional clarity. Condon plays Kate with quiet intensity, a sharp intelligence, and a weariness that never tips into cliché; she is utterly convincing as someone who has spent years holding a team together under enormous pressure, and she resists sentimentalising the role, instead conveying strength through focus, stillness, and precision. Her real Thurles accent cuts through the film’s Americanised tone with refreshing honesty, and her interactions with Pitt are some of the few scenes where the characters actually seem to be listening to each other, rather than just exchanging narrative signposts. Condon gives the film an anchor it sorely needs; her presence reminds us that real professionalism, unlike myth-making, is often quiet, procedural, and unglamorous.

Javier Bardem, as Ruben, brings a burst of theatricality to the film, infusing the role with flamboyant energy and a sense of chaotic optimism; however, the character is largely functional, existing to propel Sonny back into the spotlight without ever challenging him in any meaningful way. The supporting cast (Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Sarah Niles) hover around the margins, delivering competent performances with minimal material, their characters flattened into symbols of management pressure, team loyalty, or comic relief.

Kosinski, known for his sharp visual style and technical fluency, demonstrates his ability to orchestrate large-scale spectacle. The racing sequences are visually striking, shot on real Formula One circuits with a clarity and precision that lend authenticity to the speed and stakes of each lap. The sound design is immersive, Zimmer’s score pulses with urgency, and the choreography of each race sequence displays a deep understanding of the sport’s rhythms and visual grammar. These scenes are the film’s strongest, offering brief moments of sensory engagement that feel kinetic and fully realised. Yet despite the spectacle, the emotional impact of the racing never quite lands; the races feel beautifully staged but narratively empty, high-stakes only in theory.

The film’s emotional terrain remains strangely flat, with no real sense of risk, internal conflict, or moral ambiguity. Formula One itself is credited as a collaborator and co-producer, and its fingerprints are all over the film’s pristine surfaces; this isn’t a gritty exposé or a character study shaped by risk, but a controlled and flattering promotional package, designed as much to protect the sport’s image as to tell a compelling story. Sonny’s comeback is treated as inherently noble, his past simplified into a hazy backstory that is referenced but never interrogated. The script avoids exploring power dynamics, institutional politics, or even the more brutal realities of the sport; instead, it offers a smooth, reassuring vision of mentorship and redemption that resists complexity at every turn. It gestures toward struggle but refuses to inhabit it, framing transformation as something that happens through platitudes and montages rather than through real reckoning.

F1 is not a failure, nor is it a breakthrough. It is a glossy, competently assembled film with moments of charm and flashes of emotional intelligence, particularly in the supporting performances; yet it is also a film that plays it safe, that chooses myth over humanity, and image over inquiry. Pitt remains a magnetic presence, but without anything to push against, he becomes a symbol of resilience rather than a character living through it. Condon and Idris do what they can to bring texture and tension and at times they succeed, but they are working against a script that too often mistakes suggestion for substance. For fans of the sport, or admirers of Kosinski’s visual style, F1 may offer moments of satisfaction. But for anyone seeking a story that earns its emotional arc, it may feel more like a simulation than a race.

• In cinemas now. Watch the trailer below: