Joseph Kosinski’s “F1”. Knights in Racing Cars [REVIEW]

Joseph Kosinski’s F1 features just about every tried-and-true trope of the sports film genre. A veteran with a traumatic past returning to the track for one last shot at greatness? Check. A raw talent whose biggest obstacle is his own ego and ambition? Check. A scrappy underdog team defying all odds to take on the big leagues? Check. Believe me, the list could go on. F1 feels a lot like a well-built racing car: assembled according to the manual, using parts we all recognize. The engineers’ job was clear—minimize the risk of failure. In that context, what matters most isn’t the quality of each individual component, but how they’re assembled—and, crucially, who’s behind the wheel.

On both fronts, F1 delivers. Watching the film’s opening moments, it’s hard not to be reminded of Kosinski’s previous hit, Top Gun: Maverick. Once again, the director does something refreshingly un-Hollywood: he introduces his protagonist not through exposition or voiceover, but through action. In Maverick, we were on the edge of our seats as Tom Cruise tried to break the Mach 10 barrier. Here, we’re thrown straight into the chaos of the 24 Hours of Daytona. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) is jolted awake in his beat-up van just minutes before he’s due to drive.

Disappointed by his team’s poor standing, he jumps behind the wheel and almost single-handedly turns the tide of the race. As his teammates celebrate on the podium, he quietly collects his bonus and slips away, refusing even to touch the trophy—“bad luck,” he says. Sonny returns to Formula 1 thanks to his old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem), who’s running a financially troubled team, Apex GP. They need results fast if they want to keep their investors. Sonny’s mission is twofold: rescue the struggling team and mentor a rough-edged but prodigiously gifted rookie, Joshua Pierce.

While Ehren Kruger’s script leans heavily on genre conventions, it serves as a solid foundation for Kosinski to build a gripping audiovisual experience. The film is packed with racing sequences—we return to the track nine times, often for more than just a brief adrenaline hit. The camerawork is jaw-dropping: sometimes inside the car, mimicking the driver’s gaze and picking up every twitch and hesitation; other times clinging to the undercarriage or whipping alongside the bodywork, giving us a visceral taste of speed. Kosinski doesn’t reinvent the wheel here—he uses the established cinematic grammar of racing films—but he amplifies it, polishes it, and executes it with surgical precision. If you thought Top Gun: Maverick was the peak of cinematic tech, F1 pushes the envelope even further.

It helps, too, that the film was shot during actual races, with real F1 drivers making appearances. When Max Verstappen breezes past Pitt on a turn, all Sonny can say is, “Damn, he’s good!” Despite the film’s technical bravado, the story’s emotional core remains intact. The off-track scenes aren’t just filler—they matter. Like Ron Howard’s Rush or Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire, F1 is fundamentally a story about two competing personalities.

Damson Idris’s Joshua gradually becomes a co-lead, undergoing a compelling character arc. Under Sonny’s guidance, he matures and transforms. Their fierce rivalry evolves into a mentor-mentee bond—one that reflects their real-life dynamic, with Idris, a rising star, holding his own alongside Pitt, the seasoned icon. Their chemistry is authentic and crucial; like racing, filmmaking is ultimately a team sport. In the closing scene of Rush, Chris Hemsworth’s James Hunt tells his rival Niki Lauda that racecar drivers are modern-day knights: noble, admired, and always brushing against death.

In F1, Sonny makes a similar comparison. Asked by his teammate what’s next after the season’s final race, he replies that he’s got “a few dragons left to slay.” But Kosinski’s vision of the driver-knight is different. No longer the romantic rogue like Hunt, he’s a pilgrim—a wandering soul ever ready for the next challenge. Someone who laughs when asked why he races. Not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because to him, it’s the same as asking, “Why do you breathe?”