Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A stranger rides into town. He’s there because his old friend called him out of retirement to restore law and order, and the hotshot young deputy isn’t up to the task. But the stranger carries an old wound, and his methods are unorthodox, so at first the seasoned old man and the youngster butt heads. It takes the intervention of the schoolteacher to untangle their horns, and the stranger falls for her. With the bad guys outwitted and the town saved, the stranger kisses the schoolteacher goodbye and moves on to the next town.
F1: The Movie might swap race cars for horses and a garage for a dusty town, but at its heart, it’s a western. Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, an “old-school rough and tumble cowboy” and once promising Formula 1 driver who, after a terrible crash, has resigned himself to racing in obscurity. Another former racer, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), tracks him down because he needs help. If his racing team, Apex, can’t start winning, the entire operation gets sold.
Cervantes has one good driver, the young Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), who has no desire to drive alongside an old man. Hayes, for his part, has no desire to stay inside the conventional lines. F1 racing is more than just cars driving around a track, and the movie does a great job of showing the strategy involved as Sonny operates on the track like a chess master. His car and all the others are just pieces on the board to be manipulated.
The Apex engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden), initially put off by Hayes’ bravado and reputation, eventually comes to admire him. After making peace between Sonny and Joshua, she and Sonny have a brief love scene. But a conspiracy that threatens to take down Apex arises, and Sonny is injured with redemption just one race away.
In Hebrews, we read a stern reminder that with age should come experience and a willingness to teach (Heb. 5:12). Sonny Hayes has age and experience, and the issue is that he keeps his knowledge to himself. Joshua Pierce is, as the writer of Hebrews might say, “unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child” (vs. 13). Powers of discernment, whether on the racetrack, or telling good from evil, can only “be trained by constant practice” (vs. 14). Only when teacher and student are fulfilling their respective roles can there be harmony.
F1 is everything we want in a racing movie, and really the only thing we could do without is the language that pushes the boundaries of an R rating. As someone who loves racing video games and John Wayne movies, I couldn’t have been happier as the movie strikes that perfect balance between Euro-sport and the oft-told tale of the old gunfighter who rides away. This time, in a Baja buggy. (Warner Brothers)
About the Author
Trevor Denning is an alumni of Cornerstone University and lives, lifts weights, and spends too much time in his kitchen in Alma, Mich. His first short story collection is St. George Drive and Other Stories.