My mate, Tony, said of this film: “Total bollocks, but really good.” That review cannot be bettered, so feel free to stop there.
But because the same Tony demanded my opinion, I’ll write it down.
You certainly aren’t short-changed. The racing is spectacular. Brad is charismatic. The supporting cast is world-class.
I saw it in IMAX because I thought it would basically be dreadful, but hoped the GoPro-on-steroids racing footage would make it worth it. The big surprise is that I stopped noticing how spectacular that stuff was, because I was genuinely invested in the cheesy story and characters—I was more interested in whether they won than how technically marvellous the filming.
Turns out the script is just as precision-tooled as the camera rigs. You won’t mistake it for Shakespeare, but it’s been wind-tunnelled to popcorn-smacking perfection. Writer, Ehren Kruger, must have poured over the FIA rules, wringing every daft possibility out the regulations. It’s as if every race is Abu Dhabi in 2021, where Verstappen won his first championship thanks purely to still-debated late call from the the racing director.
The only time it strays into the cringy territory I had been dreading, is when trying to find the (racing) line between boring us with F1 technicalities, and making sure we understand whats going on. The race commentary is hilariously descriptive, spelling out every acronym, and there’s a truly epic conversation between Martin Brundle and pal before the last race, that sounds like they’ve both just looked up F1 on Wikipedia and are breathlessly explaining it to each other.
But how on earth can that be avoided when you’re aiming for a $55million opening weekend?
Also nice, though surreal, to see the real F1 faces. It’s like those 40s musicals where they go to a restaurant and it’s Louis Armstrong as himself playing on the wee stage. It already feels like it’s from a bygone era, with poor Sergio Pérez in Red Bull fatigues, and Gunther Steiner swearing adorably in the Haas paddock.
A great 80s-Tony-Scott-style blockbuster, then, that we haven’t had since Michael Bay and pals made that kind of thing super-shit in the 90s.
Total bollocks, but really good.