Do not go into F1 the Movie expecting surprises. Director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger have essentially recreated their previous hit Top Gun Maverick, replacing the fighter jets with Formula One race cars, and Tom Cruise with Brad Pitt. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! It just depends on how much you like fast cars and Brad Pitt, because it's those things and not the story that are going to do the heavy lifting when it comes to entertainment.
Pitt is aging race-car driver Sonny Hayes. While racing for Lotus's Formula 1 team back in the 1990's he crashed and almost died, so stepped away from Formula One, though never left racing behind completely. After winning a race at Daytona, he's approached by his former Lotus teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) with an offer to join his now struggling F1 team, APXGP. Though they have the talented but brash rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), they have yet to win a race that year, and with nine ahead of them, and their second driver out for the season, Cervantes hopes Hayes will get them a win.
If you're suspecting the aging racer will Break the Rules, and Teach the Rookie a Thing Or Two About Racing and Life, you'd be right. Just about every cliche you'd find in an underdog sports story can be found in F1 the Movie, and every expected story beat is there. In fact, the only time it veers away from the predictable is in its ending, which is all wrong, and the one time it should have stuck to cliches.
Filmed for IMAX, the racing scenes are undeniably thrilling. And loud. I don't know enough about Formula 1 to know if what happens in these races is in any way plausible, but I suspect they are not. But they're what are required to make a sometimes monotonous sport a tad more thrilling to watch in a movie. If actual races feature as many POV shots, and camera whip pans as seen in F1 the Movie, I could actually see getting into the sport, which, thanks in large part to the Netflix series, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, has picked up a lot of new fans in the past few years. I'm not sure F1 the Movie will satisfy those fans. I suspect the implausibility of some of the races may irk more than thrill. But it could create even more followers of the sport, which I suspect is exactly the point.