The Return of the Red-Blooded Hero: Brad Pitt in 'F1: The Movie' (2025)

A Formula One driver comes out of retirement to mentor and team up with a younger driver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOVZXh8xpC4

Look, I don’t want to say that watching F1: The Movie made me want to buy a vintage leather jacket and drive a manual transmission car into the sunset, but I also don’t not want to say it. If Top Gun: Maverick was a testosterone-infused cocktail of nostalgia and velocity, F1 is the afterburner chaser that proves Hollywood can still make a damn movie without checking in with a DEI consultant.

Let’s start with the plot - because we still pretend that matters. Brad Pitt plays a retired Formula One driver who trades in retirement’s poolside mojitos for pit wall sweat and rubber-burning reality. He takes a young, hungry driver under his wing, played with raw charm by Damson Idris. It’s not exactly Citizen Kane, but who cares when the camera is hugging the tarmac like it’s trying to get its number?

Now let’s talk Pitt. Ladies and gentlemen, Brad Pitt is the Gen X Robert Redford - if Redford had a six-pack that looked like it was chiseled by Michelangelo on creatine. Pitt doesn’t just play a mentor - he embodies what Hollywood forgot: a flawed but unflinching hero who doesn’t need to apologize for being the center of attention. Women want him. Men want to be him. Millennials wish he was their dad. Gen Z wonders what anti-aging app he's using.

In a cinematic world where every male lead has to be emotionally crippled, morally ambiguous, or replaced entirely by an algorithm, F1 gives us something we haven’t had since Stallone stopped climbing mountains with his bare hands - swagger.

The cinematography? Off the chain. I’m talking so in the cockpit you’ll check your shirt for G-force stains. Claudio Miranda, the mad genius who also shot Top Gun: Maverick, brings the same glorious kinetic energy here. It’s like strapping into an F1 car driven by Zeus on Red Bull. There were moments where I felt like I was part of the race, and for the first time since my third mid-life crisis, I felt alive again.

The music? Hans Zimmer shows up like Gandalf at Helm’s Deep, layering that epic orchestral urgency with Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain - a track so iconic in the world of F1 that it should be classified as high-octane fuel. The trailer alone is worth a Spotify loop.

Now, while we’re still doing the obligatory criticism part of these things, let me just say this: what the hell was the deal with that mystery card in Pitt’s pocket? They kept teasing it like it was going to be the Rosetta Stone of the whole story, and then - poof - it’s never mentioned again. Was it his will? His first pole position? A discount coupon for tires? We may never know.

And yes, some scenes were as predictable as your uncle's Facebook political rants, but who cares? It’s like going to a steakhouse and complaining that the menu is just... steak. You're here for the sizzle, the satisfaction, and that lingering whiff of masculinity that doesn’t smell like oat milk and microaggressions.

Now let’s appreciate the how this film was made. Not just some backlot CGI wizardry - no sir. They filmed during real 2023 and 2024 Grand Prix weekends. This wasn’t a race about racing - it was racing. The fictional Apex team had a real garage squeezed between Mercedes and Ferrari. They even built a modified F2 car to look like a legit F1 beast. And Mercedes helped build it! That’s like getting Michelangelo to carve your pumpkin.

Pitt was paid $30 million for this role - his biggest paycheck to date. Worth every penny. He could’ve phoned this in like some washed-up actor cashing in on name recognition (cough Bruce Willis in Out of Death), but instead, he brings his A-game, his B-sides, and even the bonus tracks.

This was a movie so steeped in motor oil and cool that the actual 2025 F1 drivers had a private screening at Cannes. Picture that: a bunch of people who live this life still showing up for the cinematic version. That’s like a Navy SEAL buying a ticket to Top Gun and saying, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how it is.”

And let’s not forget, this thing is the unofficial sequel to Top Gun: Maverick - in the way that it reunites director Joseph Kosinski, Jerry Bruckheimer, Hans Zimmer, and the team that made us all believe again that men could be cool without first attending a feelings circle.

So, what’s the verdict? F1 doesn’t reinvent cinema. It doesn’t rewrite genre. It doesn’t give a TED Talk on social responsibility. What it does is give you 129 minutes of unapologetic horsepower, grit, and a main character who doesn’t need to cry in the mirror to be emotionally complex. It’s a love letter to those of us who miss movies with heroes, swagger, and just the right amount of mid-life crisis.

Final Rating: 9.0/10

This movie puts the pedal to the metal and leaves the rest of Hollywood in the dust, choking on its virtue signaling.

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