F1

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, F1 follows Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes, an aging driver who works as a racer-for-hire, as he agrees to join a struggling Formula One team owned by a former teammate (Javier Bardem’s Rubén Cervantes). Filmmaker Kosinski, armed with a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, does a terrific job of initially luring the viewer into the far-from-brisk proceedings, as F1 kicks off with a stirring, promising opening stretch that effectively establishes its insular world and assortment of characters – with, in terms of the latter, Pitt’s commanding turn as the affable protagonist matched by top-flight periphery players like Bardem, Kerry Condon, and Tobias Menzies. It’s disappointing to note, then, that F1 slowly-but-surely wears out its welcome as it progresses into a padded-out and rather repetitive midsection, as the movie, which runs a palpably (and needlessly) overlong 155 (!) minutes, has been suffused with an excess of racing sequences that become more and more tedious (and less and less coherent) as time goes on. By the time the somewhat endless third act rolls around, F1 has cemented its place as a disappointingly (and distressingly) less-than-streamlined endeavor that squanders an engaging setup and sturdy lead performance.

** out of ****