F1 (2025)

I got roped into watching this movie. Truth be told, I'm not big into watching new releases so this wasn't really on my radar but I ended up watching it anyway. It was... fine. The race sequences were exciting, sure, but it had all the trappings of an A-list celeb jerk-off, to be a bit crude.

Pitt plays the maverick, the reckless racer Sonny Hayes, who cannot be restrained, who spits in the face of death, until his Formula 1 career ends in a massive explosion. Now, after a three decade hiatus, he returns to brings some experience to a constructor dead-last on the grid. His partner is the cocky young talent Joshua Pearce, played by Damson Idris, who unsurprisingly takes a disliking to Hayes. But over the course of the season, Hayes completely transforms the team, and it looks like they might not finish at the bottom of the grid this year. Basically the underdogs trope again, a heavy staple of sports movies.

I guess that's my big problem with this movie, it's unimaginative. It's (conceptually) easier to make the actual sports scenes -- the races, the aggression -- gripping to watch, but what happens between those scenes is where great sports movies come into their own: last year's Challengers comes to mind.