The Village BBS
General Category => Movies and Television => Topic started by: number six on July 16, 2025, 07:54:41 AM
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The racing movie this year is apparently F1 about Formula 1 racing. Apparently to tie it in better they decided to also make it the most formulaic plot ever.
In a unique twist Brad Pitt is a racer.. he used to race F1 cars 30 years ago but a horrific crash has kept him away but now he's back. He'll clash with his younger team mate, there may be a romance.. and every other cliche' you can think of in this sort of movie but don't worry it never really fully commits to any of them.
Out of the gate they make it perfectly clear that Brad Pitt doesn't really care about money or prestige he's just here because he loves racing. This of course doesn't help with any sort of stakes or investment as it doesn't really matter if he wins or loses because either way the character will be racing tractors in Nebraska the next week.. that's just who he is man. I'm sure they were trying to set him up as a 'pure racer' but this movie really needed something to hook you in and it's never really there.
There really isn't an antagonist.. no rival evil racing group even.. until the last 20 minutes where they try to twist in a character as being the foil but once again it's not really developed so it never matters more than surface level.
On the upside the racing sequences are done well but without any sort of tension much of their impact is robbed. Also I don't know much about F1 racing but this seems to be about as realistic as Rocky was for boxing. I have no idea what the rules are but even I was calling BS on some of the stuff they were trying to pull out.
This is another one of those 'meh' movies. It doesn't do anything overly offensive but it also doesn't do anything overly intersting or new and for some reason takes about 2 1/2 hours to do it.
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I agree. While I liked it, I didn’t love it.
I felt it was dumbed down racing at least as presented and didn't seem realistic as far as the F1 tactics involved.
More far fetched but 1 or 2 dimensional and never fully explored.
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Yeah, F1 is oddball racing so some aspects may seem unrealistic but the movie didn't go too far into the weeds. Current driver and seven-time F1 world champ Lewis Hamilton was brought in as producer advisor.
Its a racing movie so I expect a story about a team struggling to win and lots of cars going vroom which it delivered and the movie was decent fun but forgettable. (Netflix has "Formula 1: Drive to Survive" if you really want to dive in.)
I would recommend Ford v Ferrari for a better racing story and documentary.
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I mean it's not awful it's just very generic. If this was in that one aisle at your grocery store back in the 80s it'd be in a yellow box with black letters that said 'exciting race car movie'
I totally agree Ford v. Ferrari is the gold standard of these recent race films. It had everything including a gripping story.
As far as the F1 rules.. no it's totally bunk. Even the people involved said basically 'it's a movie'. For example in an early race Brad Pitt intentionally (repeatedly) bumps other cars to get a caution flag to help his partner. I'm sure this wouldn't fly. However in one of the later races there's a crash on one of the last laps.. no caution flag. It fails it's own internal logic. Once again it's basically Rocky.