The main driver and heroic gamer of Sony’s “Gran Turismo” is Jann Mardenborough, who did indeed level up “From Gamer to Racer,” as the movie’s poster tagline teases. But in this overly polished retelling of this true story, the biggest hero is actually a Nissan executive here named Danny Moore (played by Orlando Bloom), who wanted to prove that “Gran Turismo” is such a great product that it’s like the real thing. Our surrogate Jann wouldn’t be in the driver’s seat, competing in the world’s most competitive and intense races, using his skills from bedroom gaming to hit 300 mph in real life, without a trailblazer like Danny (real name Darren Cox) trying to help Sony make a bunch more money. It worked: Danny’s idea was danger-prone but headline-grabbing; it even got the long-running Playstation video game franchise a movie. Directed with technological savviness but with (an understandable) lack of heart by Neill Blomkamp (“District 9,” “Elysium”), “Gran Turismo” only fires up cynicism by primarily making us root for the titular game, Sony, and execs like Moore—it’s a hollow biopic about a marketing stunt.
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Jann (played here by Archie Madekwe of “Midsommar”) is one of a dedicated few who mastered the “Gran Turismo” driving simulation invented by Kazunori Yamauchi (Takehiro Hira), whose backstory provides a prologue/commercial before Jann’s story begins. Along with other photogenic young gamers who memorized courses and perfected high-speed millisecond decisions by playing the game, British gamer Jann is invited to Gran Turismo Academy, an idea concocted by Danny to turn Sony’s consumers into examples of how realistic the simulation is. And after besting his whittled-down list of peers in a five-car race, Jann seeks to get his official license by at least placing fourth in a set of smaller, international competitions.
The end credits of “Gran Turismo” tell us that Mardenborough has done over 200 races and was even his own stunt driver for this movie. On its own, Mardenborough’s story is a compelling example of where gamer culture is now—its online connections have made it mainstream beyond bedrooms and basements and ushered in an era where eSports is a multi-billion-dollar business. But “Gran Turismo” treats this tale like any regular sports story and hardly feels authentic in its telling. It doesn’t give back much to the underdog formula it freely borrows from, which takes away much of the soul its true story could have.
The driving scenes gain some dramatic momentum, especially when Blomkamp and company can show some close-call advances and throw in a handful of big crashes—jaw-dropping moments where modded-out speed demons lose to gravity like paper airplanes. But the film’s loud-volume racing sequences are nearly overshadowed by Jacques Jouffret’s dive-bombing drone cinematography, which swoops around packed courses, often making hard turns to capture multiple cars as they blitz by. We become more aware of the camera work than the precisely orchestrated stunt driving; the same goes for the many quick cuts that disorient us as we follow along. On a smaller scale, Blomkamp’s best flourish to getting us “in the game” is when his visual effects emphasize a vehicle’s technological intricacy, as when Jann’s speeding car is deconstructed part by part before our eyes.
From its actual inciting moment when Danny pitches the idea of a GT Academy to a group of suits in Tokyo, “Gran Turismo” is a parable about getting people to believe in gamers. Jann experiences that with his father, Steve (the great Djimon Hounsou in another thankless role), who takes Jann to his job at the rail yard to show what happens when one doesn’t have a plan. Steve doesn’t see the game-changing movement, this film reckons, that his son will be leading.
But the convert in “Gran Turismo” is Jann’s coach Jack Salter (David Harbour), who plays the role of the gruff, seasoned leader (and ex-racer) who is initially unamused by the prospects he has to weed out at the Willy Wonka-like GT Academy. Harbour plays him well enough as a construct, a crowd-pleaser who asserts his disgust with an anti-inspiring speech at the beginning of GT Academy but then sees the light as Jann advances. In too-sudden of a character change, Harbour’s Salter suddenly becomes his biggest champion, abandoning macho-cheesy tough love for an equally cheap sense of amazed support. But as “Gran Turismo” goes on, Harbour’s emotional investment when screaming into microphones and cheering at the sidelines is at least the source of numerous (and fleeting) potent-enough dopamine hits.
The story’s underdog pieces—borrowed from “The Karate Kid,” “The Mighty Ducks,” take your pick—are polished so aggressively by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin’s script that they lose their luster. In the process, Madekwe’s character hardly develops beyond being a mascot. He has little personality aside from being our underdog and having a crush on Audrey (Maeve Courtier-Lilley), a friend he scroll-stalks on IG. The most defining trait Jann gets as a character is that he listens to Kenny G and Enya to relax before a race; the script returns to this for a weak joke multiple times and tells us at the credits that it’s true.
Mardenborough’s story has some natural ups and downs—and an exciting high, as we see here, with a grand finale at Le Mans (but why is that course 24 hours? Someone needs to reconsider that). But it’s telling how much the movie doesn’t earn a real-life tragedy that suddenly occurs mid-way through, and yes, it did happen. “Gran Turismo” just doesn’t have the dramatic strength to hold the weight of this traumatic moment, as much as Madekwe also tries to sell its anguish. At least the car crash at the center of it is spectacularly executed.
“Gran Turismo” arrives well into a Hollywood era when studios are trying to perfect how to immerse viewers in their beloved forms of playtime, whether it’s “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” Hasbro’s tumultuous cinematic track record, etc. But “Gran Turismo” is more laughable and egregious than almost any toy-based adaptation in history, given how shameless it is in making marketing part of its high stakes. There are a few rushes in this movie’s incredibly calculated rendition of Mardenborough’s tale, thanks to Blomkamp. But Sony is transparent with this adaptation, which has no ambitions to make “Gran Turismo” any more challenging than gamer bait. [C-]