Warners releases a great F1 movie and some Nightmares on 4K disc

By Jim Bray
October 16, 2025

Brad Pitt's latest start turn turns out to be a pretty compelling racing movie, one of the better ones in a genre where great racing seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

I mean, in a Hollywood that brought us such excrement as 2001's Renny Harlin/Sylvester Stallone IndyCar film Driven (which as a diehard IndyCar fan I really, really wanted to love) and 1990's Tony Scott/Tom Cruise Days of Thunder, one can be forgiven for being suspicious.

On the other hand, there have certainly been some great racing flicks. John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix (1966) is probably the best racing film ever, with its Cinerama picture and fantastic racing sequences (all of which were done analogue, of course). Ron Howard's Rush was also a great entry and I enjoyed the game/simulator-based Gran Turismo as well. Even 1969's James Goldstone/Paul Newman outing Winning, which has the classic Indy 500 as its climactic race, deserves mention as a decent racing movie.

So, it was with more than a tad of angst I allowed myself to be dragged to the IMAX theatre last summer to see F1 the movie. And darned if I didn't like it – quite a lot! It was one I wanted in my racing movie library, and I figured the 4K disc would be the way to go.

I was right. While the 4K isn't the best I've seen on disc, it's a darn fine presentation with very nice video and terrific audio – though the extras are a tad underwhelming.

Joseph Kosinski, who was behind the camera for Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick, directs F1 and he and the team do a nice job of capturing the world of Formula 1 racing (well, not that I've ever been to an F1 race…), the pageantry and the noise (too bad this wasn't "smellovision!") and the competition.

The story is kind of like Gran Turismo, though kind of in reverse. In GT, the story revolved around a gamer kid who gets a chance to pursue his racing dream and is mentored by an irascible old timer. Here, the irascible old timer is the star and he gets to mentor (well, cajole may be more like it) a young up and comer.

Pitt's character, Sonny Hayes, was a real up and comer himself 30 years ago – kind of a "crash or win" driver in the mould of a young Paul Tracy in IndyCar. A horrible crash ends his dreams of F1, the supposed pinnacle of motor racing, and he spends the next decades racing anything he can get his hands on (the movie starts with him winning the 24 Hours of Daytona). He's a racer who just wants to race.

Then his old teammate Ruben Cervantes (talk about tilting at windmills!) (Javier Bardem), comes a-calling with a ridiculous but intriguing offer: help him save his foundering team, to keep it afloat while his young driver has a chance to mature.

It's a dumb idea in a sport where you're an old fart if you're over 40, but it's done believably enough that I let my disbelief be suspended and just enjoyed the ride.

And it's a great ride! The racing sequences look and sound great, the characters (if not their situations) are believable and they don't even get bogged down with a damn love story like happened with Grand Prix.

I haven't seen many of Brad Pitt's films but of the ones I have I've found him to be a good actor, very natural and convincing. F1 is no different. Here, he wears Sonny's years and his experience and his mistakes as if they're really his. Which of course is how it's supposed to be.

Hayes is no prima donna, nor some washed up never was. He may have a checkered past but he knows racing and he knows how to win – even though he never won an F1 race back in the day. And naturally, his knowledge and his "feel" for the sport run him afoul of the conventional wisdom folks around him, from technicians to other drivers to corporate execs and to the damn news media who couldn't get a story straight if their lives depended on it.

I really enjoyed the press conference scene, where Hayes' team mate Joshua Pearce (played by Damson Idris) is trying to hone his media relations skills while Hayes' answers are monosyllabic but very telling.

I'm not going to tell you if Hayes – or Pearce – ever wins but along the way to the climax we get to see a lot of crashing and burning, and angst and fear (well, more like panic) as well as corporate corruption and even some tender moments. All in all, I loved it!

The 4K UHD disc is very good, though as mentioned above it isn't quite the pop-off-the-screen look of some 4K discs. It's still very watchable, however, with great detail and colours and deep black levels.

The audio is just how it should be, however. The Dolby Atmos track, which I experienced as 5.1 Dolby TrueHD since I'm not Atmos-equipped, is terrific. It's loud and brash, and enveloping, but it's never shrill or muddy and ends up being just fine.

Extras are more promotional than particularly interesting, which disappointed me because I was hoping for some real, in depth "making of" stuff. Still, what you get is okay.

Inside the F1 The Movie Table Read takes us to Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix, where we get to meet members of the cast and crew.

The Anatomy of a Crash sees Director Kosinski, joined by his special effects supervisor and others, talking about shooting one of the film's crashes, of which there are many.

Getting Up to Speed looks at the training needed to prepare the racers for getting behind the real wheel, while APXGP Innovations sees Kosinski and others opining about how they got the racing footage.

There are others, too, including a look at Lewis Hamilton, the British F1 multiple time champion who also co-produced the movie. Incidentally, look for other F1 drivers on camera during the film.

This is definitely a film that belongs in the libraries of racing movie fans.

On a lesser note, Warners has also released a seven-movie set of the Nightmare on Elm Street films on 4K disc. Now, I've never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street movie and this one arrived so close to the street date that I haven't had a chance to sit through them. Fortunately, the folks at High Def Digest have a rather in depth review of each film here and rate the video and audio quality of the 4K discs as about 4.5 out of a possible five.

Here's how the folks over there summed up the boxed set: "Entering the dreams of the Ultra HD world, Warner Home Video and New Line Cinema present the franchise in an attractive box set, simply dubbed A Nightmare on Elm Street: 7-Film Collection, with all seven films being granted their own dedicated UHD disc. And all seven of them arrive with improved, largely beautiful-looking and remastered HDR10 presentations, along with impressive and highly satisfying Dolby Atmos soundtracks. Sadly, the supplement material is the same as the previous Blu-ray collection, yet the overall UHD package is worth the purchase and Highly Recommended."

So, if you're a fan of the "Krueger Kollection", this set might be right up your alley. Or street, anyway.