Fresh off Top Gun Maverick, this is Kosinski’s Days of Thunder. Is this Tom Cruise trajectory the natural and inevitable path of testosterone-fueled movies, or is it coincidence? With Senna and Rush and Ford v Ferrari, a surprisingly good run of racing movies in recent years.
Action is frenetic but impressively smooth. Cameras placed in, on, over, and around the cars capture the claustrophobic adrenaline of Formula One beautifully. The sweeping aerial shots of the races, whether drone or CGI, are stunning. Kosinski clearly has a gift for filming machines in motion. The de-aging effects used for Brad Pitt in the flashbacks are also well-done.
But despite the well-shot action and visuals, the story and performances disappoint. The “grizzled veteran schooling the cocky young hotshot with all the new technology” trope has been around for decades, at least since Rocky IV, and it feels too easy here.
More importantly, Sonny Hayes doesn’t really grow. Yes, he wins the race, but how is he a better person by the end? He abandons his team and walks away from his girl, for what? To go joyriding in the desert. Seems childish and selfish and is ultimately unsatisfying.
I’m also not convinced Brad Pitt is a great actor. Like the main character in any dramatic film, Sonny is supposed to feel at least a little bit warm and relatable, but Pitt’s delivery often feels detached. His dialogue is rigid, his laughs seem forced, and he has this odd mouth-open expression that just looks goofy. I’d like to see Pitt play truly vulnerable and human, not sure I ever have. Javier Bardem, in a relatively small role, runs circles around him. Kerry Condon is warm, authentic, emotionally present, and fantastic.
The race announcer is another mixed element, overlaying every racing sequence with omniscient narration about strategy and technical details, clearly to educate the audience so they can appreciate the finer points of the action. What’s weird is that sometimes the voice has a loudspeaker echo, as if coming from the track, and at other times it’s quieter and more intimate. It would have been better, I think, to introduce this voice an actual character worked into the story. If they had done that, the exposition wouldn’t feel so shoehorned in.
The synth-driven score by Hans Zimmer is a nostalgic highlight, and I love that Lewis Hamilton helped produce the film.
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