Film Review of the Week

Drama

F1: The Movie (15)

Review: Brad Pitt turns back the odometer, looking considerably younger than his svelte 61 years, and pumps the accelerator on testosterone-soaked bravado in Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski’s predictable drama, which boasts seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton as a producer. The British driver appears fleetingly alongside current Formula 1 stars in footage captured at real race weekends including Silverstone in Northamptonshire, where Pitt and co-star Damson Idris appear on the grid and in the pit lane as drivers of a fictional 11th team vying for championship glory.

The conflation of crowd-pleasing fantasy and high-octane reality is impressive, heightened by Pitt performing his own driving so remote-controlled, custom-made cameras, mounted on race cars, can spin through 180 degrees and capture his dogged expression in thrilling duels. When Kosinski’s picture feels the need for speed, the adrenaline rush is intoxicating. However, you can hear narrative brakes screech every time screenwriter Ehren Kruger addresses character development and a linear plot punctuated by fractious exchanges between the two leads as they jockey for supremacy behind the wheel. “I don’t live with my mum,” protests Idris’s cocky upstart, “she just cooks for me sometimes!” A romantic subplot between Pitt and Kerry Condon never accelerates into top gear.

Thirty years after an accident on the track nearly ended his driving career, Sonny Hayes (Pitt) delivers a dazzling penultimate leg in the 24 Hours of Daytona endurance competition for Chip Hart Racing. Soon after, he receives an unexpected visit from former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), who owns the Apex Grand Prix (APXGP) Formula 1 team. Ruben is 350 million US dollars in the red after a disastrous first half of the season without a single championship point. The board of directors is poised to pull the plug.

With just nine races left, Ruben begs Sonny to help him turn around APXGP’s fortunes by partnering hotshot rookie Joshua Pearce (Idris). Team principal Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), technical director Kate McKenna (Condon) and chief mechanic Dodge Dowda (Abdul Salis) join Joshua in openly questioning Ruben’s judgement by entrusting their fate to an old-timer who hasn’t driven Formula 1 for decades. Sonny silences his critics except for Joshua and his concerned mother Bernadette (Sarah Niles), who fears the veteran’s reckless streak could endanger her boy.

F1: The Movie is a technically polished and emotionally satisfying underdog story with one inevitable outcome at the glitzy Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that concludes the race season. Kosinski’s picture earns the chequered flag for its exhilarating depiction of life on the edge on rubber-scorched wheels and narrowly avoids clipping barriers with a brief injection of villainy in the boardroom. Pitt and Idris are well-matched as boyishly charming mentor and hot-headed protege, destined to learn valuable life lessons from each other.

Horror

M3GAN 2.0 (15)

Review: Killing was child’s play in the 2022 horror thriller M3GAN. The eponymous artificially intelligent companion doll embarked on a murderous rampage that almost claimed the life of her creator, accompanied by some deliciously camp one-liners and a hypnotic dance sequence that went viral on social media. Writer-director Gerard Johnstone’s sequel is hardwired for laughs, not scares, cranking up the tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery as the eponymous antagonist chases redemption as an unlikely anti-hero capable of saving mankind from an insidious new threat.

The robotic villainess’s meme-worthy gyrations are matched in the second film by a snort-inducing a cappella rendition of Kate Bush’s empowering 1980s anthem This Woman’s Work to soothe away one human character’s woes. Johnstone milks the ludicrousness of this supposedly touching situation for every chortle and guffaw and he relishes early scenes, which trap acid-tongued M3GAN inside the cheerful blue frame of a real-life AI robot for children named Moxie, which the mechanical menace denounces as “a plastic Teletubby”. Once M3GAN returns to her familiar girlish form, replete with technical enhancements, the expertly choreographed fight and chase sequences begin in earnest and cameras pirouette and spin in synchronicity with warring robots to create a sense of kinetic energy.

Two years have passed since M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) went rogue and almost killed her creator, robotics engineer Gemma Forrester (Allison Williams), under the auspices of protecting Gemma’s orphaned niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). Gemma and colleagues Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps) barely survived the damage to their reputations. Meanwhile, Gemma fell hopelessly in love with responsible AI activist Christian (Aristotle Athari), becoming one half of a technically savvy power couple at the beating heart of Silicon Valley.

Alas, M3GAN’s specs are leaked to a defence contractor to create the ultimate undercover asset, an Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android aka AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno). Like her predecessor, AMELIA becomes self-aware and rebels against her human masters with deadly force. The only way to neutralise this relentless adversary is to resurrect M3GAN and upgrade her killer hardware so she stands a chance of vanquishing her contemporary. Understandably, Gemma is reluctant to unleash her duplicitous and corrupted creation back into the world but desperate times call for outlandish and potentially suicidal measures.

M3GAN 2.0 is a marginal downgrade on the sleek cautionary thrills and chills of the original. Bigger doesn’t mean better when it comes to the sequel’s running time (around 20 minutes longer than its predecessor) and the ultimate stand-off between mechanised rivals is a reboot of android nightmares from the Terminator films. Irreverent and salty humour dilutes the horror and Jemaine Clement’s supporting turn as a self-glorifying tech mogul is one broadly comedic swish too far towards risibility.