F1: High-octane entertainment

F1 (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.13.25

This is, without question, the ne plus ultra of professional car racing movies.

 

Until now, depending upon one’s age, fans likely would point to 1966’s Grand Prix, 1971’s Le Mans, 2013’s Rush or 2019’s Ford V Ferrari.

 

Cocky young race car driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris, left) can't imagine why he
has been paired with — in his eyes — a washed-up senior citizen like Sonny Hayes
(Brad Pitt), and does nothing to conceal his contempt. The kid has much to learn...

(Sorry Tom, but 1990’s Days of Thunder sinks beneath its banal plot, stick-figure characters and jaw-droppingly dreadful dialogue.)

This one blows ’em all off the track.

 

Director Joseph Kosinski, co-scripter Ehren Kruger, cinematographer Claudio Miranda and editors Stephen Mirrione and Patrick J. Smith have done the seemingly impossible, by dropping their film right into the middle of actual Formula 1 racing competitions. The result is a level of unparallelled authenticity, which grants us edge-of-the-seat viewers an astonishing sense of being there: not merely on the track, in the design facilities and amid the pit crews, but also inside the cars during the heat of racing.

 

It's actually better than live-TV coverage of actual Formula 1 events, because Miranda employed state-of-the-art, pan-and-tilt portable cameras capable of providing multiple angles of drivers in the bay — essentially getting bolted into their vehicles, like the steering wheel and other components — and during the height of racing action on straightaways and G-force curves.

 

But all of this would be mere window-dressing, absent a solid story and relatable characters, played here by an impressively charismatic cast led by the always captivating Brad Pitt. Adept at strong dramatic scenes and graced with a quiet, laid-back calm that was made for a movie camera, Pitt also is blessed with one of cinema’s most radiant smiles. 

 

When it emerges — particularly during unexpected moments, as if Pitt were happily surprised by the appearance of an old friend — the emotional impact is to die for. He truly is the Baby Boomers’ Paul Newman.

 

Kosinski and Kruger essentially have revisited the formula that worked so well for them in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick: another take on the redemption saga of Old Dog Teaches Young Pup New Tricks, in a highly charged dramatic environment.

 

And, just as Kosinski put us into a fighter jet’s cockpit like never before, he has done the same here with Formula 1 racing.

Outside the Wire: And let's leave it there

Outside the Wire (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.12.21  

Lazy science-fiction is truly annoying.

 

Actually, Netflix’s Outside the Wire barely qualifies; it’s really just a testosterone-fueled, shoot-’em-up war flick with superficial sci-fi trimmings. Scripters Rowan Athale and Rob Yescombe rely on attitude rather than the slightest hint of character depth, or the philosophical issues of their clichéd scenario.

 

Given that they're pinned down by enemy fire, Harp (Damson Idris, right) has good
reason to be concerned. He needn't be, because Leo (Anthony Mackie) is about to
demonstrate his enhanced fighting skills.

Their grunt-level sensibilities become obvious immediately — two minutes in! — when everybody onscreen relentlessly employs F-bombs as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, verbs and interjections. That’s just tiresome.

 

Mikael Håfström helms this mess with the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros. No surprise, given a résumé of similarly undistinguished thrillers and horror flicks (Drowning Ghost, Derailed, Escape Plan, etc.). Ergo, we shouldn’t expect anything better here.

 

So.

 

The year is 2036, and Eastern Europe has become a relentless war zone; the Russians once again are the villains of choice. Good-guy Americans fight alongside lumbering robot soldiers pejoratively dubbed “Gumps” (presumably after Forrest Gump, which is pretty damn insulting). This isn’t any sort of advantage, because the bad-guy soldiers have their own Gumps.

 

We pause, for a moment, to explore this a bit. No mention ever is made, regarding how Gumps receive and execute their orders; no indication of who programs and controls them; no contemplation of whether they could be hacked by the opposition; and so forth. They’re just part of the noisy wallpaper. (Like I said, lazy writing.)

 

The ground troops are supported by drones controlled from afar by pilot teams such as Harp (Damson Idris) and Bale (Kristina Tonteri-Young). When a nasty firefight threatens to become catastrophic, Harp makes a needs-of-the-many choice that saves dozens of soldiers, at the expense of two who perish. Trouble is, that decision disobeys a direct order.

 

Rather than being court-martialed and sent home in disgrace, Harp is assigned to accompany Capt. Leo (Anthony Mackie) on a covert ground mission beyond the fenced American compound (ergo, “outside the wire”). Intel reports that a lunatic named Victor Koval (Pilou Asbaek) intends to obtain the launch codes for a handful of nukes, with which to terrorize the world (we assume); Leo wants Harp along because he “thinks outside the box.”

 

Ah, but — as Harp soon learns — Leo isn’t just any black-ops specialist; he’s “fourth-generation biotech.” (Again, questions: Where did he come from? Does this mean first-, second- and third-generation biotechs are wandering around? Answers come there none.)