F1 (12A, 155 mins)
Verdict: A winner
The summer’s first blockbuster screeched into cinemas on Wednesday, and it’s a proper car crash. But in a good way, mostly.
The star of F1 is Brad Pitt; and Joseph Kosinski, who cemented his reputation as a fine action-film director with 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, is at the wheel.
Yet there’s an even more eye-catching name in the opening titles… Seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton is a producer and by all accounts kept a keen eye on the racing scenes.
They are duly thrilling, even if the engine driving the plot forward would barely power Noddy’s car, let alone Hamilton’s.
In a cut-and-paste narrative that we’ve seen a thousand times before in the cinema, a grizzled has-been makes an unlikely comeback, sharing his know-how with a cocky young gun. We all know the story.
But in F1 it’s told with such high-octane energy that it barely matters.
It also helps that the has-been in question, former Formula One driver Sonny Hayes, is played by Pitt, whose alpha-male sexiness, even though he’s knocking on a bit, Kosinski honours to the point of parody.
There are a couple of shots of a laid-back, denim-shirted Sonny coolly sauntering out of the haze like the Marlboro Man, or indeed like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
In a cut-and-paste narrative we’ve seen a thousand times before, a grizzled has-been (played by Brad Pitt) makes an unlikely comeback, sharing his know-how with a cocky young gun
Former Formula One driver Sonny Hayes, played by Pitt, oozes an alpha-male sexiness that even though he’s knocking on a bit, Kosinski honours to the point of parody
Some petrolheads will love the film regardless, given that for every moment that in real life would never happen there’s a proper blast of authenticity
And then there are the shots of him not in a denim shirt, or any shirt at all. I think it’s known as objectification.
Anyway, Sonny raced against the likes of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost until a crash at the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix ended his F1 career.
Since then he’s been driving in less glamorous forms of motor sport, but now his old buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem), owner of the debt-laden Apex team, begs him to make a comeback.
Ruben hopes that Sonny’s nous will rub off on his rookie English driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), only the younger guy is none too keen to be mentored until, of course, their mutual antipathy gives way to respect.
That’s the essence of the tale, but meanwhile Sonny takes a fancy to the team’s comely Irish technical director, Kate (Kerry Condon).
Will she submit to his advances? Take a wild guess. There’s also a somewhat half-hearted attempt to pep things up with a spot of boardroom chicanery, masterminded by a sly Apex director played by Tobias Menzies.
Maybe these sub-plots are a form of insurance, in case not everyone in the audience understands the actual racing action.
As further insurance, Ehren Kruger’s script treats us to some dubious track commentary, in which the leading cars, the Red Bulls and Ferraris, are barely mentioned.
Pitt stars alongside Javier Bardem as his old buddy Ruben, Damon Idris as rookie English driver Joshua Pearce and Kerry Condon as the team’s comely Irish technical director, Kate
Formula One isn’t always the spectacle that it is here, but then this is popcorn entertainment at its corniest
The commentator only has eyes for Hayes and Pearce in their Apex machines at the back.
But like the ropey plot, the clunky exposition hardly matters. I’ve seen better motor-racing movies but none that convey so viscerally the adrenaline rush of driving at speeds of well over 200mph.
The movie itself, by contrast, does not exactly race by, well and truly putting the ‘exhaust’ in exhausting.
Some petrolheads will love it regardless, given that for every moment that in real life would never happen there’s a proper blast of authenticity, with fleeting cameos for Hamilton himself and Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, and a more extended role for commentator Martin Brundle.
Many non-purists will love it too. Formula One isn’t always the spectacle that it is here, but then this is popcorn entertainment at its corniest.
It’s old-fashioned, escapist fun, even if it takes an age to reach the chequered flag.
F1 is in cinemas now.
Rust (15, 139 mins)
Verdict: Needs WD40
An old-fashioned Western, set in the 1880s and starring Alec Baldwin and Patrick Scott McDermott, Rust is often sumptuous to look at
As a narrative Rust is way too laborious, telling at unnecessary length the story of 13-year-old Wyoming orphan Lucas Hollister (Patrick Scott McDermott) who, with uncomfortable irony, accidentally shoots and kills a man
On the subject of endings, Rust is a film that needs to be assessed from back to front, starting with the dedication just before the credits roll.
It says simply ‘For Halyna’, and then quotes her: ‘What can we do to make this better?’
Halyna Hutchins was the Ukrainian cinematographer fatally shot four years ago during the making of Rust, when leading man Alec Baldwin fired a gun that he thought was loaded with dummy bullets.
In the context of that tragedy, the film’s merits hardly seem important.
Maybe it should never even have reached our screens. On the other hand, it serves as a poignant epitaph for Hutchins, who plainly had a great eye.
An old-fashioned Western, set in the 1880s, Rust is often sumptuous to look at.
But as a narrative it is way too laborious, telling at unnecessary length the story of 13-year-old Wyoming orphan Lucas Hollister (Patrick Scott McDermott) who, with uncomfortable irony, accidentally shoots and kills a man.
He is found guilty of premediated murder and sentenced to hang, but then gets sprung from jail by laconic misery Harland Rust (Baldwin), who turns out to be the grandfather he never knew.
There ensues an over-extended chase as various lawmen, bounty hunters and rogues try to catch the pair, whose own strained relationship gets better and better, ending in, yes, mutual admiration. It’s the same theme as F1, in other words. As they might have said in the old West, this sure ain’t a good week for original storytelling.
Rust is on streaming platforms including Amazon Prime Video.
Scatty sequel is like Terminator 2 with Barbie dolls
M3GAN 2.0 (15, 120 mins)
Picture Terminator 2 with Barbie dolls. At pushing two hours, this scatty sequel may be surprisingly strong on flashy fight action, if weak on actual scares
A camp, AI upgrade on the likes of Chucky and Annabelle, the first M3GAN, with her pussy bow pinafore and uncanny valley features, was firmly part of the creepy killer dolls club.
But her sequel, is, rather confusingly, barely a horror movie at all.
Starting ‘somewhere near the Turkish/Iranian border’ a disjointed opening introduces us to AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a new fembot assassin created by the US government, who, inevitably, lose control of her.
With AMELIA threatening to wipe out humanity, the only thing that can possibly stop her is a murderous toy called M3GAN – if her original creator (Alison Williams) will agree to reboot her… this time with zero parental controls.
Picture Terminator 2 with Barbie dolls. At pushing two hours, this scatty sequel may be surprisingly strong on flashy fight action, if weak on actual scares.
But its saving grace is that it’s also stuffed with laughs, including Jemaine Clement as a lecherous tech bro.
It’s also, sporadically, smart. Where the first movie leant into fears about the harmful effects of screentime sucking away childhood, this one suggests that we need to build a respectful relationship with technology, equating AI with an unruly tweenager that requires patient handling.
And it offers a vision of the near future in more ways than one. With the two female android action stars bearing an uncanny resemblance to MCU’s Black Widow and John Wick’s Ballerina, I felt like I was watching a trailer for an avatar-powered Hollywood 2.0.
M3GAN 2.0 is in cinemas now.
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
