Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s “F1,” a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.

Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in “Top Gun: Maverick,” has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on “Maverick,” takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score.

And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim.

But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in “F1,” has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” In the opening scene of “F1,” he’s sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team’s car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute.

Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and “F1” is off to the races.

The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer’s score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team’s chief.

Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on “F1.”

Whether “F1” pleases diehards, I’ll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski’s films as well as wonders like Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When “F1” heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the UK’s fabled Silverstone Circuit.

OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There’s what I’d call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it’s clear that he’s going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that’s in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs.

This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and the two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he’s limited by a role ultimately revolving around and reducing to a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic.

A relationship does develop, but “F1” struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt’s Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Condon is a rush of naturalism.

If there’s something preventing “F1” from hitting full speed, it’s its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny’s motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from “Grand Prix” to “Senna” to “Ferrari” — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine.

“F1” steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When “F1” does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road “F1” might have taken.



‘Outlander’ Prequel Series ‘Blood of My Blood’ Goes Back in Time Again to Meet the Parents

"Blood of My Blood" premiers on Friday. (Starz)
"Blood of My Blood" premiers on Friday. (Starz)
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‘Outlander’ Prequel Series ‘Blood of My Blood’ Goes Back in Time Again to Meet the Parents

"Blood of My Blood" premiers on Friday. (Starz)
"Blood of My Blood" premiers on Friday. (Starz)

In Starz's "Outlander," Caitriona Balfe's Claire Fraser is bold and brave. She can also think on her feet in high-pressure moments. Her husband Jamie Fraser, played by Sam Heughan, is protective and empathetic. In a new prequel series out Friday, called "Outlander: Blood of My Blood," we see how they each got that way.

"Blood of My Blood" tells the love story of Jamie's parents, Ellen and Brian, and Claire's parents, Julia and Henry. The characters are inspired by the stories of Diana Gabaldon but there are no novels for showrunner Matthew B. Roberts to follow. He also is the showrunner of the original series, which debuts its final season early next year.

With no source material "there’s a lot more room to play in," explained Roberts. In "Outlander,there are all these tentpole moments that we have to write to because that’s what our audience wants from the books."

The Frasers

In the books, Gabaldon mentions Jamie's parents in "breadcrumbs" said Roberts. "We stick to those, but the freedom is what can we do after that to get to essentially where 'Outlander' begins."

The big obstacle facing Jamie’s parents, Ellen and Brian, who meet in 18th century Scotland — is that they come from families that "don’t get on," said Harriet Slater, who plays Ellen. "They don’t mix. It’s completely forbidden. My father’s worst enemy was Brian’s father so I’m sure he’d have had some strong words to say about the whole thing."

Jamie Roy, who plays Brian, enjoys the duality of his character. There's the "tough, stoic, Highland warrior" who he says "rides around on horses and swings swords and stuff." Then there's this "lovely, gentle, poetic, romantic guy who wants nothing more than to take care of other people."

A few months ago Roy went back and rewatched episodes from season one of "Outlander," because he wanted to watch Heughan as his TV son.

"There’s so many people who had said there was resemblances about our performances and such. I was like, ’Well, let me see what Sam’s journey was like right at the start. And I kind of see what they mean."

The Beauchamps

Claire's parents Julia and Henry are mentioned even less in the books. They died in a car accident when Claire was young. We see them meet in "Blood of My Blood" during World War I. Henry was a soldier and Julia worked in postal censorship.

"When we meet him, he’s pretty much given up," said Jeremy Irvine, who plays Henry. "I think he’s accepted death really and doesn’t have anything to live for and sends this one last lifeline out in the form of an open letter back to England." Julia finds his letter at work and feels compelled to respond. The two end up falling in love while writing back-and-forth.

A series of events send Julia and Henry, like their daughter, back in time. They end up in the 1700s where Irvine explains they are "trying to live second by second."

"The time they’ve gone back to is not a friendly time to be an outsider at all. Being an outsider would likely mean death. Henry and Julia, as is Claire, are very quick-witted, fast-thinking, intelligent people. They survive by the skin of their teeth."

Season 2 of 'Blood of My Blood' is coming too

The cast is already in production on season two of "Blood of My Blood." Hermoine Corfield, who plays Julia, says it's been nice filming "in our own little secret bubble."

Promoting the series has been tricky because they have to remember what happened in season one versus season two.

"You almost forget what you did in season one because you’re already onto that next journey and storyline," said Corfield.