johnke.meF1: The Movie
The most thrilling bad movie I’ve seen. The racing is savage and a legitimate technical marvel. Not just from a “how did they get that shot?” point of view, but also from a narrative coherency point of view. The two leads are driving identical cars moving across the screen at crazy speeds and yet the every shot is completely legible. By the time we make it to the final race, the filmmakers are using shots of gloves to do invisible cross-cutting between the two leads to show the synergy between them and it all works and I was never once confused. I can’t overemphasise how much this part of the film impressed me.
Unfortunately, everything that isn’t actual racing is incredibly poor. Blockbuster cellulose is rarely great but this is noteworthy for how unexpectedly weak it is. The screenplay is a grab-bag of narrative cliches and those poor, unfortunate actors are asked to say some phenomenally ridiculous things. It’s a screenplay stuck in fifth gear, full of things that sound great when said in the middle of an adrenaline-fueled set-piece but so stupid anywhere else. Lines like “The question is, do they have the car?” “We have the driver” are great in the context of a film’s emotional climax, but “I’m offering you an open seat in Formula One, the only place you could say if you win, you are the absolute best in the world” — supposedly the film’s emotional call to action — is like nails down a blackboard for me and even the great Javier Bardem struggles to deliver it with any kind of heft. When we get the callback to this line at the end of the movie, it actually takes some of the air out of an otherwise joyous moment. And don’t even get me started on the constant “miracle” bullshit they keep returning to that feels like it’s from baby’s first screenplay.
I will say though (and I might be biased here) that Kerry Condon is the only person who can take the words and make them sound entertaining. Or at least, she was skilled enough to cut through the nonsense with a little bit of edge that they needed. Fair play, Kerry.
Also this film is (rightly) compared to Kosinski’s earlier film, Top Gun: Maverick, a film that was (rightly) criticised for its glamourisation of the U.S. military industrial complex. Well, let me tell you, I’d be hard pressed to choose which one I find more grotesque — that or F1® The Movie’s glamourisation of absolutely obscene wealth. Actually gross.