Brad Pitt’s Need For Speed
Devil Wears Prada sequel, Paramount's plusses and minuses, Glenn Close is fair, Fred Armisen is unstable and a fresh kill.
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Devil Wears Prada sequel, Paramount's plusses and minuses, Glenn Close is fair, Fred Armisen is unstable and a fresh kill.
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Brad Pitt thrives when things around him move quickly.
He excelled at pouring out his soul while flying through space in Ad Astra (2019), tuning out while cruising through LA in Once Upon a Time in the West (2018), and enduring an identity crisis while speeding across Tokyo in Bullet Train (2022).
But Pitt has an immense ability to slow down time.
Look no further than his latest film, F1, which just dropped a teaser trailer.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Follows a Formula One driver (Pitt) who comes out of retirement to mentor and team with a younger driver.
The most cinematic moment of the trailer is not the glorious cinematography fueled by the high-octane next-gen camera system by director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) but the moment at the end when the camera zooms into Pitt’s stolid face, locked into the race at 200 mph.
What we unlock in this stillness is the reflection of ourselves in his character– we project onto Pitt ourselves and lock into the race.
Reflecting on a similar style of performance in Ad Astra, Pitt stated:
“I see this as very still, and I want to see how much truth and honesty can read on camera, can resonate.”
While this style of performance is a far cry from where Pitt started off with megawatt characterizations as a prophetic lunatic in 12 Monkeys (1995) or a cynical mastermind in Fight Club (1999), they’re just as compelling.
It’s the next gen of Pitt, and we have much more to look forward to.
F1 opens June 27, 2025.
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