As a follow-up to the 2022 blockbuster, Top Gun: Maverick – it only seemed sensible for director Joseph Kosinski to inch towards a racing film. After all, the Tom Cruise-starrer had all the dazzle of a sports or a heist film, more than a war film. The enemy is not named or seen, and the film is shouldered on a breathless sequence of planes flying low through a ravine (to avoid the enemy’s radar) with a stopwatch counting down. It’s such a jaw-droppingly idiot proofed mission, it borders on a parody of a war film – if it wasn’t so technically proficient and slick to look at. It conveys something Kosinski echoes with F1: if you’re looking for meaningful critique of existing power structures – he’s probably not your guy. Kosinski only wants to show you a good time.The 51-year-old filmmaker, with a glowing reputation for how he merges VFX, practical effects with actual shots, seems to have cracked something new. In an increasingly self-aware Hollywood, where cliches and genre tropes often carry a whiff of an apology, Kosinski has found a way to marry old-school cheesiness with a hi-end, modern visceral experience. It’s unabashed hero-worship, expensive needle-drops, and exhilarating filmmaking carried with instincts — all rolled into one giant ball of fast food. I haven’t gone back to rewatch Maverick, and it seems unlikely that I’ll rewatch F1 in the near future. But if mainstream filmmaking involves pulling off a magic trick, might it be said loud and clear: Joseph Kosinski held my senses captive for nearly all of the film’s run-time of 156 minutes (no mean feat in 2025!)Built around the gargantuan silhouette of ‘the greatest that never was’, Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) – a walking/talking cliche of a well-regarded professional race driver, who never lived up to his potential – the film starts off in the 24-hour Daytona. Hayes lives in his van, and drives around from one competition to the next, living between the thrill of one competition to the next. The day after winning the 24-hr Daytona, he is visited by old friend, and owner of F1 team, Apx, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), whose team is currently in last place. Being on the verge of losing control of his team after a third consecutive season without scoring a point, Ruben asks Hayes to join the team, and work alongside a much-younger colleague, Joshua Pearce (Damon Idris).A still from ‘F1’.As Sonny Hayes, Pitt harks back to his role in Moneyball (2011) – a cynical baseball GM, unable to shake off his failure as a professional player when it mattered most. It tells us of his distrust of existing wisdom around scouting, prompting him to recognise an alternative method of picking players with specialised skills. Similarly, Hayes had a promising career ahead of him, which vanished after a near-fatal crash, hospitalising him for an extended period, and contributed to a downward spiral taking him away from public life, leaving him with a gambling problem. In the last few years, Pitt has gravitated towards roles that revere his star-wattage,, starting with Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood (2019). His other recent films include Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2022), David Leitch’s Bullet Train (2022), and Jon Watts’s buddy-comedy Wolfs (2024). I don’t know if it’s consciously designed this way, but Pitt also seems to be diving deep into finding parallels between his characters and his personal life. I like the wry wisdom on his face, which he doesn’t seem to be trying to hide. Hayes is not a particularly mysterious character, but a snackable Pitt creation, who seems so proficient enough in rules of the race to compensate for his inferior car by manipulating the rule-book by invoking the emergency cars.A still from ‘F1’.I was more intrigued by Joshua Pearce’s character – a black driver, constantly on his phone, torn between listening to his manager to do more media engagements, and his mother, who still insists on immaculate behaviour. Co-produced by seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, I wondered if Pearce’s character had any input from Hamilton, given that Formula One is primarily considered a white person’s sport, cordoned off for the ultra-rich. Hamilton has had to overcome significantly more obstacles compared to many of his fellow drivers, held to a higher standard of public conduct, less forgiving of mistakes. It’s something that is drilled into Pearce, causing him to be on edge. A professional athlete’s career could be over before you could finish spelling Czechoslovakia, and that explains why Pearce is always guarded, confrontational towards Hayes. Always trying to prove like he’s the alpha in the team.I liked how the film leaned into the cattiness of Formula One — showcasing intra-team rivalry, the shifting dynamic between driver and team principal, the relationship between drivers and the pit crew, hostile takeovers from the outside trying to take over the management of a team – the film has everything spicy about the peak racing business. But what’s also interesting in this symphony of thunderous cars, charismatic stars, peppy needle-drops and the visual sizzle of the sport, is how Kosinski pulls the brakes during crucial times, punctuating the blockbuster aesthetic with silences. There’s a superb moment between Bardem and Pitt, as they sit before Sonny’s first race, deep in a moment of foreboding silence. Similarly, when something finally goes to plan for the team during a race, Sonny lets out a reluctant fist pump, excusing himself away from the team celebration. I enjoyed Kerry Condon’s revisionist character Kate — the only female technical director in Formula One. Condon, who became a world-renowned face in a brilliant scene, when she gently rebuffs Barry Keoghan’s character in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), is given less to play with here. In an already stacked narrative, even Bardem’s character as an idealistic driver-turned-team owner, doesn’t have much beside some straight notes. However, I did find myself tearing up in a scene, when Ruben and Sonny argue about the last race of the season – at great personal risk. If you’ve followed seasons of Drive to Survive on Netflix, watched Asif Kapadia’s Senna (2010), and are vaguely acquainted with sports dramas, chances are high you’ll be playing spot the reference about which trope has been borrowed from where. But what’s impressive about Kosinski’s film is how it never lets its foot off the gas, piling up one contrivance after another, while owning it entirely. I’ve always taken offence with Hindi film producers, directors requesting audiences to leave their brains behind for a film. A film like F1 might not survive continuous probing of logic, game rules – but I’d like to rephrase that request ever so slightly. While watching Joseph Kosinski’s F1, one must try to be open to the film’s visceral impact. If you do that, you might just hear the music. *F1 is playing in theatres.