Oh, the glory of man, and the hubris that compels heroes to push beyond every boundary, to risk everything chasing a dream. The story is millennia-old. Brad Pitt brings such a heroic character to life on the silver screen. A man, a real warrior type, a maverick and a daredevil. A man who struggles not for money but for fame and glory. A man with burning ambition and legendary talent, a someone who risks even his life in the pursuit of something elusive, a sense of ultimate superiority. We all know this movie. It’s Troy.

Oh and also, he reused the same character in a pretty great car racing movie too.

This character, the fighter type, the rugged hero type, fits the actor well. He brings it to F1, a movie that is undoubtedly, very, very enjoyable, and overall, perfectly… okay. F1 follows one of Hollywood’s typical blockbuster formulas. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a wandering, freelancer race driver for hire is approached by an old friend from his past, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem). Ruben owns a Formula 1 racing team, the fictional APXGP, struggling underdogs on the verge of dropping out of the championship, which would force Ruben to sell the team. They have a young hotshot pilot, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), but they need another one – and Ruben convinces his old friend to join the fray once more and race for his team. 

The premise itself could fit into a number of hero stories. Sonny’s nomadic car racer backstory feels like a wandering gunslinger or hedge knight hero who has been transplanted and grafted onto a car racing premise, a little bit like how D&D players take and reuse kind of fitting character ideas from other genres in their home games.

The movie follows the very dramatic ups and downs of the championship through multiple races, crashes, car redesigns and clashes of the two large personalities of its drivers, as the hotshot young pilot and the grizzled veteran try to work as a team. In this they are aided by car designer Kerry Condon (Kate McKenna), team principal Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia) and challenged by Ruben’s colleague and board member Tobias Menzies (Peter Banning).

F1’s plot has a formulaic precision, so much so that it’s almost entirely predictable. The reluctant hero who comes out of retirement. The outside-of-the-box thinking and fighter spirit that he possesses that galvanizes the team. An unfortunate accident that bars the deuteragonist from racing for a while. A major third-act setback. The protagonist getting injured and risking death by racing. The compulsory romantic plotline. The young pilot mentored by the veteran. All of these elements of a formulaic narrative are held together by good acting, really inspired editing, and effects that make the races feel tangible, dynamic, and breathtaking, so much so that one almost smells the burnt rubber and feel the heat radiating from the hot metal and the asphalt. 

What the meaning of all of it is, is less clear. The “why” behind our veteran hero’s drive to push himself beyond all limits is even left as a theoretic question in the end – Which doesn’t feel like an Inception-like open question, inviting the viewer to think deeply about the nature of the struggle of man in the search of fame, but rather like the movie itself can’t tell you what motivates the protagonist.

It is unveiled early on that Sonny stopped racing F1 after a grave accident early in his career, and so his comeback story is also one of perseverance. His style of racing is that of complete dedication, but his rugged hero (somewhere between Hemingway and John Wick) doesn’t refrain from tactics that are borderline underhanded, or clearly unsportsmanlike. In a moment of vulnerability just before the disaster/crisis part of the third act (in that lull in action that movies like to fill with just such an emotional exposition scene), he tells of a sense of flow, an elusive sensation and driving high that he has been chasing almost since childhood. However, with the focus shifting almost entirely on the action in the end, this intriguing emotional expression of internal peace and focus behind the wheel is never fully explored, and the movie’s themes of the value of grit, determination and fighting spirit that defies the odds are never fully fleshed out.

This is a greatly, and superbly okay film. It’s masterfully crafted, very engaging, thoroughly enjoyable, even with the predictable by-the-numbers storyline. The story is not new, but it is clear that this kind of character fits Brad Pitt very well, who very visibly enjoys the character of the weathered, grey, roguish veteran. And we’re more than okay with enjoying the thrill of the race with him, in a movie that merits an approving “hell yeah.”