On streaming platforms, in the metro or in the cinema, you have probably not escaped the promotion of F1, the filmin theaters since June 25 and broadcast on Apple TV+. Joseph Kosinski’s new feature film (who had produced Top Gun: Maverick) features a racing pilot who, several decades after his glory hour, tries to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix to save the stable of a bankrupt friend.
With a propulsive soundtrack signed Hans Zimmer, breathtaking race sequences (in which the actors themselves have led single-seaters similar to those of F1), a pleasantly marked scenario and a five-star cast, this outsider sporting story is a high caliber entertainment, perfect for the summer season. It is also a tailor -made redemption machine for its main actor and producer, Brad Pitt.
Let’s get over several years. In September 2016, Angelina Jolie asked for the divorce of Brad Pitt after twelve years of common life. A few days earlier, during a private flight between France and California, the actor would have physically and verbally assaulted his wife and their children. According to legal documents, consulted by the New York Times in 2022, Brad Pitt would have paid alcohol on the actress and their children during a violent altercation.
Benjamin Button’s interpreter would also have “Catched Angelina Jolie by her head then (would have) shaken, (…) before pushing her against the wall of the toilet. (…) Brad Pitt then hit the plane ceiling many times, pushing Angelina Jolie to leave the toilet. ” While children tried to defend their mother, the American actor would have “Stranging one of the children and struck another in the face”. In November 2016, the FBI closed its investigation without bringing criminal charges. According to the actress, other violence would have been committed by her former spouse before 2016. After eight years of procedure, the separation between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was legally acted with an agreement, concluded on December 30, 2024.
A parallel with his character …
Superstar of the 1990s, twice elected “the sexiest man in the world” in 1995 and 2000 by People magazine, Brad Pitt (61 years old) survived several decades of media overexposition, especially after her (first) controversial divorce with Jennifer Aniston and her marriage, with Angelina Jolie. While his second divorce was finally pronounced, that several of his children legally abandoned his last name and would have cut contact with him, the actor’s career remains intact. The 2016 incident had little impact on how fans and the press perceive it. If his image, for the first time, seems somewhat scored, Brad Pitt works hard to limit the damage.
In recent years, the actor and producer has been more discreet in front of the camera, but was very vocal in the press on his alcoholism in parallel, as well as his sobriety started in 2016 after his separation. The actor of Fight Club And Ocean’s Eleven Also distinguished itself creatively through its activity as a producer, within Plan B Entertainment (a company originally founded in 2002 with its ex-partner, Jennifer Aniston, before he became the only owner following their breakup).
Since 2013, the company Plan B Entertainment has, among other things, specialize in the production of films made by racialized filmmakers, amplifying stories still too rare in Hollywood: Selma,, Moonlight,, Minar or Twelve Years a Slavewhich allowed him to win the Oscar for best film as a producer in 2014. A huge critical success which also had the benefit of buying from the actor a reputation for“The most Woke Hollywood Woke”.
On both sides of the screen, Brad Pitt thus maintains a redemption story. When he chooses to return to the camera, whether it be Wolfs Or Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood From Quentin Tarantino (for which he was anicarized in a supporting role in 2020), the characters of the beautiful sixty -something kid have a common point. These are often heroes on the return, still so charming despite the years, but faced with their own obsolescence. And this is also the case of Pilot Sonny Hayes in F1, the film.
… and with Tom Cruise
The film could have been called “F1 Maverick”, so much Joseph Kosinski recycles the recipe for his previous card. Second biggest success at the French box office in 2022, Top Gun: Maverick married breathtaking sequences of action to a tasty meta discourse, which crystallized the public image of Tom Cruise as a hero of immortal action. An inevitable Hollywood megastar, impossible to hate despite the various controversies linked to his career, his private life and his proselytism for Scientology.
In F1, the filmfighter planes of Top Gun have been replaced by Formula 1 racing cars, but the plot, or even certain sequences – the cutting remain generally identical. We follow there indeed the rivalry between two men belonging to the same team: a somewhat arrogant young (Damson Idris in F1Miles Teller in Top Gun: Maverick) and an older expert with almost superhuman capacities. Like the character of Maverick by Tom Cruise (whose nickname literally means “who does only his head”), Sonny Hayes, that of Brad Pitt, is an old rascal as charming as they are brilliant, that everyone underestimates and that one cannot help admire for his burnt attitude.
Very formulaic, the script of F1 Building on an old -fashioned cinematographic pleasure, with tip filming methods and an estimated budget around 300 million dollars. It marks all the compulsory stages of the sports drama focused on the triumph of an outsider, a genre of which Brad Pitt has been familiar since The strategist (Or Moneyballreleased in 2011). There is even a romance as silly as it is predictable between his character and that of Kerry Condon – twenty years younger, but this is another story.
But the success of the film should not also obscure its subtext, which works as a praise and a meta comment on the career of Brad Pitt. His character may be called Sonny Hayes, the parallels with the actor’s trajectory are manifest. Like Brad Pitt, Sonny is an old darling, a beautiful kid from nineties Who drags several divorces behind him, an addiction problem and a sometimes violent temperament.
The film transforms his faults into assets and makes him a humble and generous hero, who learned from his mistakes without losing his malice. After Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt bought himself with F1, the film A project that is based on its slightly damaged public image to better rehabilitate it. And like Top Gun: Maverickit works very well. After its first weekend in theaters, the film has already collected $ 144 million in world box office revenue and signs the second best start of Brad Pitt’s career after World War Z during the summer of 2013.
