Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, Only the Brave, Maverick: Top Gun) directs this story he co-wrote with Ehren Kruger (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Ghost in the Shell, Dumbo, Top Gun: Maverick) about former Formula One driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), who teams ups with promising younger driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). (155 min.)
Glen I’m disinterested in car racing, but I love a race movie because they’re always about big personalities—dreamers, extremists, rebels. Pitt is in full movie star mode as Sonny Hayes. Think Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Steve McQueen rolled into one swaggering but deeply flawed badass. Sonny’s an itinerant driver, sort of a hired gun living out of his van and going from one race to the next. Three decades earlier, he raced Formula One and was a promising upstart whose career ended with a crash and serious injury. Now his old racing partner, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), who has a stake in the APXGP F1 team that’s currently in last place and short a driver, convinces him to give F1 another shot. Under Kosinski’s kinetic direction, Sonny’s story is riveting. I loved it.
Anna I’m always surprised at how captivating race movies can be. The premise never grips me, but the right filmmaker and enough human drama to carry a storyline can really pull me in. Sonny is a no-nonsense guy, not out for money but just trying to get by doing what he’s always done—win races. But even he can’t resist the call from his past and one last chance at winning that F1 title. Unfortunately for Sonny, the sport is inextricably tied to sponsorships and press conferences and far too many egos in every corner. One of those egos is the other driver for his team, Joshua Pearse (aka JP), whose hunger to come up in the sport and retain his sponsorship has him seeing red once Sonny arrives. What we soon learn is that Sonny is just as much about strategy as he is about winning, and sometimes that means sacrificing for the team overall. Pitt has been wanting to make a race movie for years, and his devotion to it is evident on-screen. Sure, this movie may be about racing, but it’s also about the people behind it, the ones who spend their lives chasing a tenth of a second.
Glen One of those people is Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), a female design engineer in a male-dominated sport. Like Sonny, she’s got something to prove. Sonny wants her to upgrade the car so he and JP can “battle in the turns” with cars that are faster on the straightaway. Kate at first doesn’t respect Sonny and points out that he’s not a “has been,” he’s a “never was.” Ouch! Sonny gets berated a lot, by JP’s mother Bernadette (Sarah Niles), by the press, even by Jodie (Callie Cooke), a pit crew tire gunner he stands up for after she makes a costly error. Sonny doesn’t defend himself, doesn’t deflect, and doesn’t argue. He takes criticism stoically because he follows a code. He’s a quiet hero who lives by his rules, and that makes him irresistible.
Anna Pitt perfectly embodies the no-nonsense nature of the character that he built. You can’t help but like Sonny, even when he’s being a jerk. This is a big screen delight, so buckle up—it’s a long journey but well worth it. Δ
Arts Editor Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Split Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jul 3-13, 2025.