F1 The film: perfectly oiled mechanics [critique]

By plunging an aging star (Brad Pitt) in a supersonic whirlwind, Joseph Kosinski applies the Top Gun recipe: Maverick at F1 and signs a blockbuster with big scriptwriting strings, but really exhilarating.

The ease with which this film nails you in your chair is phenomenal. It starts with the image of an ocean in the setting sun, story that we immediately understand that we are good at Jerry Bruckheimer, producer-substear of the 80s recently re-inflated to block by the box of Top Gun : Maverick. But the postcard eighties is quickly hacked by the plan of a road seen from the cockpit of a Formula 1, a tired VHS way, like a bad memory which would have been sprained by an old video recorder. Then Brad Pitt opens his eyes …

It was just a dream. Motors rumble in the distance, the 24 hours of Daytona are raging, Pitt has a race to win. He emerges from the mini van which takes him the place of a traveling home, in a quick succession of close-ups describing his cowboy routine, not very far from the Cliff Booth of Once upon a time… in Hollywood. He then embarked in his car, and us with him. The Riff of “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin resonates: ultra-rebattu choice, certainly, but which says where the ambition of F1 The film : This will not be a question here of surprising anyone, on the contrary, only to send skillfully dosed adrenaline rushs, at the right time. Pitt presses the accelerator and director Joseph Kosinski then instantly redeployed the magic formula of plane scenes Top Gun : Maverick. This feeling of being In The race, the perfect legibility of geometry and issues, the ballet intoxicating audiovisual stimuli that must be recorded and recomposed at full speed … all carried by the supreme coolitude of man behind the wheel. In barely ten minutes, the film won the game – at least for those who are sensitive to this mixture of somewhat faded American mythology and primal kinetic excitation.

From then on, we will forgive a lot to F1. His scenario, for example, which seems to have been written in a hurry on a corner of the Bruckheimer office, after a meeting at the top with Lewis Hamilton (septuple World Formula 1 champion, producer and luxury guest of the film, who at 40 years old sees the time for professional retraining) and the officials of the Apple cinema division-The Tim Cook firm in investing. Dollars in this blockbuster with enormous industrial issues, surfing on the fairly recent enthusiasm of the US general for F1, itself boosted by the Netflix documentary series Drive to survive.

Between two sequences of ultra-close racing, shot in the heart of real Grands Prix, from Spa-Francorchamps to Abu Dabi via Las Vegas, it will therefore be for F1 To slalom 2h35 during the worn archetypes, over a film that is both bicycle and heavy. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes (this name!), Former child prodigy of F1 whose career crashed in the 90s, but who remained addicted to speed, and who will be called to the rescue by an old friend (Javier Bardem) whose F1 stable is at most bad. Can Sonny Hayes find his Mojo last sixties and come to compete with Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc on their own land? Will he end up getting along with the young crazy dog ​​(Damson Idris) who takes him as a teammate? The technical director (Kerry Condon) will make her a sprained her professionalism by succumbing to the charm of Sonny (who is used to taking ice water between two heating turns)? Will the alert-dearch shareholder striking the prosecution (Tobias menzies) take the role of the villain during the third act?

All this is sewn with white thread. But that’s the idea. The film provides the same kind of naive pleasure as reading Michel Vaillant of the golden age – studied by a state -of -the -art technological arsenal. Kosinski plays the friction between the past and the present exactly as he did in Top Gun : Maverick : by placing the body of an aging star in the center of a supersonic whirlwind, then looking at their collision sparkling. And wondering in passing what the cinema idols of the 80s and 90s are ready to leave to the young shoots that dream of taking their place (spoiler: crumbs).

Brad Pitt had never played as much on his age as in this film, and fully exploits his land, strong, Yankee nourished with grain, a little macho on the edges – very Steve McQueen, between Le Mans (obviously) and Junior Bonner (for the “last rodeo” side). Far from the aura of unreality and the fragility which has always infused its greatest roles, of Fight Club has Babylonit appears more radiant, showing off and conquering than ever. But Brad Pitt is not Tom Cruise, and even in an advertising praise of the competition and the Win lined with product placements, he manages to understand that something else is played in a mute. An anxiety of death and existential derailment; The promise of a mystical and unspeakable ecstasy, to be experienced just before crossing the finish line. If we forgive a lot of things to this film, it is also thanks to him.

F1 The filmfrom Joseph Kosinski, with Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon… in the cinema on June 25.