Elite industry-ites were treated yesterday to a pair of F1 looksees (mid-afternoon and early evening) — Joseph Kosinski, Brad Pitt, Jerry Bruckheimer and Han Zimmer’s high-throttle gutslammer played at IMAX corporate headquarters in Playa Vista, and apparently in whoa-mama full IMAX (1.43:1) from start to finish.
Not even a capsule review, just notes: As you might expect and will be glad to hear confirmed, F1 delivers vise-like dramatic engagement with fully deployed, grade-A acting chops from consummate superstar Brad Pitt, Damson Idris (33 year-old Brit, excellent in the late John Singleton’s Snowfall series), the great Kerry Condon and the always on-target Javier Bardem …
All hail the great, still-youngish Kosinski, who has certainly matched and arguably topped his work on Top Gun: Maverick (‘22).
A 156-minute, 21st Century big-boy compadre to John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (‘66) and Steve McQueen’s Le Mans (‘71), F1 revs and rouses and vibrates your rib/soul cage, leaving you buzzed, breathless and all the rest of that classic race-car-movie stuff….you know the drill.
Does anyone wipe out a la crash-boom-bang? You don’t want me to answer this so let’s drop it. Okay, someone does but I’m sworn to secrecy, etc.
We all think of howling, high-speed track racing as an individual sport, but the high-torque F1 game can involve a one-team, two-car strategy with one driver running interference for another, depending on the situation. Plus it’s important to know the difference between hot and cold tires, and of course the drivers and pit crew are constantly jabbering while the loudspeaker guy narrates what’s happening…whew.
Pitt’s 50something Sonny Hayes is great company, a great hang. His dominance blends his cocksure Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stunt guy Cliff with, shall we say, a note of approaching-the-big-upward-slope anxiety…fear of not cutting it like he used to.
As hotshot British driver Joshua Pearce, Idris holds his lane and then some, becoming a no-fucking-around foil for Pitt’s old-school Sonny.
And Condon, a deliciously charismatic IRA psychopath in 2023’s In The Land of Saints and Sinners, is the sexy, brainy love interest for Braddy-waddy…a heart-of-gold gal who’s run a few laps around the track herself.
The Hans Zimmer score is said to be double-triple exceptional, especially during the final race when it all happens within a completely visceral, all-alone, immersive, this-is-it, you-are-there fashion without the element of loudspeaker narration or cheering crowds or anything peripheral.…
That’s enough for now. There’s a big all-media IMAX screening on Tuesday, 6.24, as well as a smattering of early-bird AMC fan screenings on Monday, 6.23, not to mention more nationwide advance showings on Wednesday, 6.25
