Besides having the most obnoxious title of the year, “F1® The Movie” — that trademark symbol is not a typo — is endlessly loud, shamelessly predictable, bad for the environment, and at least 20 minutes too long.
It’s also, ahem, extremely entertaining. Vroom, vroom? V®oom, v®oom.
F1 (without the trademark symbol) refers to Formula One, the pinnacle of auto racing: speed, glamour, high stakes, a global audience, vast sums invested, with equally vast egos on the line. In other words, it’s a lot like Hollywood, only there are exhaust pipes (no mufflers!), and the stars wear helmets.
A big reason “F1® The Movie” is so entertaining is that its helmet-wearing star is Brad Pitt. Who needs pit stops when you have a Pitt start? He plays Sonny Hayes (which sounds more NASCAR than Grand Prix). Thirty years ago, Sonny was racing in F1 and well on his way to becoming a top driver. Until he was in a very bad crash, left the circuit, and went on to lead a, let us say, highly checkered existence.
Enter Sonny’s old Formula One teammate Ruben Cervantes (a very appealing Javier Bardem). Ruben now owns an F1 team, APXGP. If the team can’t turn around its season, Ruben is going to lose ownership. He’s betting that Sonny joining the team will save the season. In the real world, this would be ridiculous. In movie terms, it makes perfect sense. That’s one definition of movie star power: being able to make something ridiculous seem perfectly sensible. The team’s top racer, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris, “Snowfall”), comes down on the ridiculous side. You will perhaps not be surprised to hear that, both on and off the track, complications ensue.
There are subplots involving a concerned mother (Joshua’s, not Sonny’s — ridiculousness has its limits) and a slimy businessman. They don’t add much. Kim Bodnia, as an APXGP principal, does. Bodnia, who in “Killing Eve” gave Jodie Comer a run for her scene-stealing money, has even more of a twinkle in his eye than Pitt does.
Old pro vs. young hotshot in high-speed situation might sound like an on-the-ground version of “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022). There’s a reason for that. Both films share a director, Joseph Kosinski, and scriptwriter, Ehren Kruger. The two movies have something else in common: a contrast between confinement (cockpits, both aerial and automotive) and wide-open motion.
Here the openness is not as wide, but the motion is, if anything, more intense. Jet fighters aren’t as prone to spinouts and multi-vehicle crashes as Formula One cars. The intensity gets a serious boost from Stephen Mirrione’s whiplash editing. The film’s budget was a reported $200 million. By any rights, Mirrione should have gotten the biggest chunk of it. The way the movie is shot (by Claudio Miranda, Kosinski’s go-to cinematographer — which means, yes, he shot “Top Gun: Maverick”), you see the speed. The way the movie is edited you feel it. Paying extra for IMAX is worth considering.
Exciting as the racing sequences are — which is plenty, and there are a lot of them — the behind-the-scenes stuff is exciting, too, albeit in a different way. The support team could be mistaken at times for NASA mission control. Who knew that going 53 laps at Monza could rival landing on the moon in degree of difficulty? There are almost as many headsets to be seen over the course of “F1® The Movie” as there are product-placement labels on the cars and drivers’ racing suits — and there are many (many) labels.
That marvelous spitfire Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin,” 2022) plays the APXGP tech director. It’s an afterthought role, or at least its being played by a woman is. You can all but hear the pitch meeting. “Hey, guys. Need to get a female in here somewhere; and Brad needs a love interest.” Basically, Condon’s playing an update of the Kelly McGillis role from the first “Top Gun” movie. Where McGillis, understandably, seemed at a loss what to do, other than narrowing her eyes at Tom Cruise, then falling into his arms, Condon gives as good as she gets. Considering that she’s up against a star of Pitt’s magnitude, that’s an accomplishment of no small magnitude.
Pitt is all easy assurance and slightly insolent charm. “I realized that in America,” a character in John Updike’s novel “The Coup” thinks, “a man is a failed boy.” Pitt is the American male as exalted boy. Or boys: He and Bardem are very good together. They seem to take as much pleasure in their sharing the screen as the audience does.
At 61, Pitt remains athlete-trim, matinee idol-handsome, and winningly wary. He’s so in on the joke there’s hardly a need to laugh. At a press conference, a reporter offers Sonny a rundown of past failings: professional, personal, marital, maybe even existential. Sonny acknowledges each with a deadpan “Yeah.” The reporter concludes by asking if, looking back, Sonny would change anything. He responds with an even more deadpan “Yeah.” Maybe getting him to elaborate could be “F1® The Movie II."
★★★
F1® THE MOVIE
Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Written by Kosinski and Ehren Kruger. Starring Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kim Bodnia. At Boston theaters, Kendall Square, West Newton, suburbs. 156 minutes. PG-13 (strong language and action)
Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.