About the film (courtesy of Columbia Pictures):
The ultimate wish fulfilment tale of a teenage Gran Turismo player whose gaming skills won a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional race car driver. Based on a true story.
Gran Turismo is a 2023 biographical sports drama film directed by Neill Blomkamp and written by Jason Hall. Based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough, the film stars Archie Madekwe as a teenage Gran Turismo video game player who wins a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional racecar driver.
The Gran Turismo video game was first released in 1997 on the original Sony PlayStation. There have been a total of eight different titles released, which have always been an exclusive to each of the five generations of the Sony consoles over the last quarter century. In addition, there have been a few secondary releases on the consoles as well as one for the PlayStation Portable Unit. If you’ve never played one of these thrilling titles, you are surely missing out!
I can’t talk about the movie, without mentioning the video games, since it’s realism is what has led us to where we are today. Gran Turismo is a solid adaptation of Mardenborough’s story. The film does a good job of capturing the excitement and passion of actual racing while blending in key ingredients of the video game to assist in guiding the story. Neill Blomkamp does a keen job bringing important visualizations to the big screen from the video game (such as the dotted driving lines) to provide a hybrid narrative to show the real life impact that spending hours of playing the “game” can have on real life situations.
The racing scenes are some of the best in any video game movie. Audiences will be white-knuckled in their seats while leaning into and and out of each turn. Archie Madekwe gives a solid performance as the lead, bringing with him a confident, but also overwhelmed, energy that is completely believable. David Harbour really dials into his character, who is hard and direct on the exterior, but has a major amount of emotion beneath that top layer that seeps out methodically throughout the film’s progression. Orlando Bloom also brings value as a character that you sometimes like and other times barely tolerate.
However, Gran Turismo does have some flaws. The pacing is a bit slow at times (it’s 135 minutes long), and the film could have benefited from a bit more character development, but making an even longer movie wouldn’t have been the wisest of choices. Additionally, the film’s ending is a bit predictable, as are many of these types of projects. Predictability comes with the territory and there’s not much you can do when it comes to a true story.
Overall, Gran Turismo is a good film that is sure to appeal to fans of racing and video games. The film is not without its flaws, but it is still an enjoyable and inspiring story. And using some of the game’s visuals was a very nice touch, while also providing the experience additional authenticity. After experiencing this film, you’ll understand exactly why the video game has the tagline of, “The Real Driving Simulator” and maybe will have even gained more respect for developers of such games.
The finish line for Gran Turismo keeps being pushed back, but as of the time that I have finished this review, the new date of release is now Friday, August 25th. That’s when you should finally be able to see this one in theaters. As for me, I’ll be putting in many hours playing Gran Tursimo 7 on my PlayStation 5 thanks to watching this film.
