F1: Brad Pitt takes a page out of Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan playbook, and tears it to shreds

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For instance, you could never imagine Cruise taking a sip more than he has prescribed for himself at the Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty, but you can imagine Pitt ‘drinking a Russian under the table with his own vodka’. This messiness is key to his character in F1, a man who is described as not a has-been, but a never-was. Back in the day, the prodigious Sonny used to race with the likes of Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, and Alain Prost. Now, presumably in his 50s — Pitt is 61 — he works as a racer-for-hire, scooping up loose change in pursuit of a rush that has eluded him for decades. There are multiple failed relationships in his rearview mirror; he’s overcome several addictions. But he isn’t in it for the money.

Brad Pitt in a still from F1, directed by Joseph Kosinski.

Sonny’s busy living in his van and drowning out his thoughts with Apple AirPods Max™ when his old buddy Ruben, played by Javier Bardem, plucks him out of obscurity and pleads with him to save his cratering Formula One team, APXGP. Half the season’s over, and the board is threatening to sell the team if they don’t show signs of life. Sonny is the only man who can save them. Desperate times call for desperate measures, after all. Plus, Ruben has immense faith in his old friend. In several of their scenes together, it seems as if Bardem is only one step away from declaring him to be the ‘Lisan al-Gaib’. As played by Pitt, Sonny has a purity of soul that makes him instantly likeable. But in a movie as well-oiled as F1, even shades of grey have to be coloured with artisanal paint.

For someone who is prone to throwing a wrench in his team’s plans, disobeying orders, and relying increasingly on ‘chaos’ and ‘combat’ as viable strategies, Sonny certainly steers F1 towards a predictable path. Much of the film’s central conflict stems from his tense relationship with his partner, the rookie Joshua Pearce, played by Damson Idris. Perhaps because the film doesn’t have a conventional villain, much like Maverick, it relies on personal drama as a source of tension. Joshua is a brash, arrogant, and eager to level up. But despite being a lone ranger — he is, in many ways, is an archetypal Western hero — Sonny instils in him a team spirit.

There’s a huge generational divide separating the two of them, but it’s obvious that Joshua cannot evolve without Sonny’s help. Heck, his career might have crashed and burned had Sonny not arrived and nudged it back on track. And if Maverick was a metaphor for the movie industry, so is F1. Both films believe, very strongly, that the era of stardom is over. It’s almost like the scene at the end of Pathaan, where Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan declare that they must bear the burden of saving the film business, because the self-centred younger stars are in it just for themselves. But there’s a difference. While Pathaan took a ‘bachcho pe nahi chhod sakte’ stance, F1 understands that true progress can only be achieved when the older generation makes way for the new.

Maverick presented Cruise as Cinema Manifest. F1 feels like the sort of movie you’d make if you were preempting a public cancellation. Cruise has survived a few of those himself, and always seems at the verge of doing something kooky enough for people to turn people against him. He’s been excused for his absenteeism and strange beliefs only because the audience has weighed the pros against the cons, and decided that life is simply too short to deny yourself the pleasure of watching him dangle from a biplane. Pitt, on the other hand, has lived a messy life. There is little to hide there. It’s telling that, in both movies, their characters don’t have kids.

Brad Pitt and Damson Idris in a still from F1, directed by Joseph Kosinski.

Unlike Cruise, who has delivered a seminal blockbuster in every decade of his career, Pitt has never been a commercial crowd-puller. He has, however, always been a movie star. Just as Bollywood is struggling to anoint successors to the three Khans, Hollywood is having its own crisis. The always outspoken Quentin Tarantino (correctly) pointed out that the guys who work in Marvel movies aren’t real stars; this includes the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, and all the rest of them. Even Robert Downey Jr’s first post-Marvel tent pole, Dolittle, flopped despite his presence.

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Tarantino went so far as to deny George Clooney a spot on his list, suggesting quite plainly that Clooney has never delivered a blockbuster on the strength of his name. The actor told GQ that he was ‘irritated’ at Tarantino for essentially writing off his entire career, but he admitted that the industry wasn’t producing stars like it used to. “We were at the very end of that, where you could work at a studio and do three or four films, and there was some plan to it. And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore. So it’s harder for you to sell somebody something on the back of a star,” he said.

One could argue that F1 sort of markets itself; the ‘sport’ is incredibly popular across the globe, and has produced numerous icons of its own. But there’s no denying that the movie wouldn’t be what it is without Pitt’s weathered performance to anchor the spectacle. Similarly, Inception wouldn’t be what it is without Leonardo DiCaprio‘s haunted performance; Armageddon would be a worse film without the youthful exuberance of Ben Affleck to counterbalance Bruce Willis’ weariness. Only Denzel Washington could take a dour gangster drama to $200 million worldwide. At the same time, it’s important to point out that Cruise took Glen Powell under his wing; DiCaprio has a famous posse of his own; Affleck and his buddy Matt Damon are empowering a whole new batch of filmmakers; and Washington, bless him, was the first person to put his money on Chadwick Boseman. An isolationist attitude rarely works. You have to pay it forward instead of pulling away; you must give back instead of gloating about your own success. If you truly believe that ‘bachcho pe nahi chhod sakte’, then teach them.