Idoli, The Last Race is the Italo-Spanish Answer to F1: Less Brad Pitt, More Two Wheels and Santamaria

Adhering exclusively to artistic merits, the review of Idoli - The Last Race by Mat Whitecross might not exceed a paragraph in length. It is in fact an honest film about the world of racing, but somewhat outdated in its approach and setup, with a predictably canonical story.
We are in the world of two wheels, and there's the usual young hopeful who enters the Moto2 circuit as a rookie, the reckless last-minute replacement, the most unpredictable wild card on the track. As per the canon, Edu Serra (Óscar Casas) is as talented as he is hot-headed. So much so that the film opens with his dismissal from the Moto3 team he races for because, in an attempt to win the last race of the season, he went off track and lost the world championship. 

Obviously, there's a beautiful tattoo artist who, burned by a previous relationship, doesn't know whether to trust him (Ana Mena is surprisingly up to the acting challenge, especially when compared to other, at least theoretically, actual actors with whom she shares the set) and a coach who wants no girls or distractions in the pits to keep his rebellious and angry rider focused. There's also an already established and cold opponent, both chromatically (a very blonde Saúl Nanni) and in character, along with unscrupulous managers and all the typical elements of the genre. In short, one certainly doesn't watch Idoli to be surprised by the narrative complexity of the plot or the psychological depth of the characters.

Idoli doesn't shy away from any of the somewhat dated stereotypes of racing films

In fact, reflecting on it, it's almost amusing how the film presents Edu as an eternal outsider, the humble guy who delivers sushi as a rider to support his bike, when in fact (as the film later reveals) he has an enviable pedigree in the racing world. It matters little. A certain type of lack of realism, combined with the formulaic nature of the situations presented, is at the heart of both romantic comedies for her and sports epics for him. What makes the search for a soulmate or victory on the track compelling is also a narrative that makes it relatively easy not only to reach the finish line, but also a whole host of other satisfactions that the audience experiences through the protagonist in the cinema: the punishment of the villains, the gaining of grudging respect from opponents, the long-awaited recognition from mentors and parents.

In short, Idoli doesn't really invent anything. Instead, it chooses the most stereotypical story possible of a young man with a big sporting dream. Furthermore, its director Mat Whitecross is not exactly a master at shooting the racing scenes, which should be the highlight of the operation. He is merely an honest craftsman, with a series of very diverse films to his credit that leave one quite confused about the trajectory of his career. Let's just say that, in other hands, the film could have shone much brighter. 
In this case, however, it's better to look at the glass as half full because, despite certain premises, Idoli is at least a watchable film for everyone and more than enjoyable for its target audience. The credit lies in the agility and lightness with which it navigates the narrative twists of its story, which also holds a couple of not entirely predictable plot twists.

Claudio Santamaria is the only champion available to Idoli

A result that owes a great deal to Claudio Santamaria, truly the only actor worthy of that title working on this film. The quantity of clichés he has to utter with an intense gaze looking at the horizon or straight into Óscar Casas's eyes, emphasizing how every achievement is (obviously) the result of athletic asceticism, concentration, and control, not sponsors and well-oiled economic dynamics, is almost moving. It's exactly what Javier Bardem had to do in F1, so much so that one of his scenes became a very popular meme. With the difference that Bardem was compensating for Brad Pitt's not-so-excellent expressiveness and an even more ridiculous script than Idoli's, where instead Santamaria incredibly finds his most capable foil in Ana Mena, known to the Italian public for her appearance on the Ariston stage.

The comparison with F1 is truly inevitable, because Idoli is exactly the same film released less than a year later. From a production standpoint, the operation is infinitely more interesting, the result of a commercial project by the Spanish and Italian sections of Warner Bros that starts from the same premises as the Apple film. That is, the desire to capitalize on the public's love for the world of MotoGP by building a fictional story whose priorities are certainly not cinephile, in which real riders like Marc Márquez lend themselves to cameos just as the sponsors of real competitions find in the fictional world of cinematic MotoGP a further opportunity for product placement.

Idoli is an ambitious and interesting "low-cost" commercial operation

In this sense, Idoli is truly a well-executed operation, which brings together Spanish aspirations and Italian needs, easily transformable into a franchise. All this at an infinitesimal cost compared to its Overseas cousins: 12 million euros against F1's 250 and more. Not that the two films operate on the same technical level, although Idoli is well-managed enough to be passable in comparison, which is no small feat.

Of course, in a better world, an operation of this kind would also try to be cinematically satisfying, perhaps looking at those who have tackled these themes and made them their own with surprising films: ten years ago Matteo Rovere launched Matilda De Angelis's career with Italian Race, two years ago the underrated Race for Glory told the world of rally in a much more adrenaline-fueled way, without giving up too much on certain genre tropes. For every boast like F1, there's a Rush by Ron Howard to compensate.