Reviews: Gran Turismo

Final Rating: 2.5/5

Gran Turismo, directed by Neill Blomkamp, opens with documentary-style footage of the team at Japanese game development studio Polyphony Digital scanning cars, rendering models, and playtesting the titular game. “25 years ago, Kazunori Yamauchi wanted to make racing accessible to everyone,” a text overlay tells the audience as an orchestra warms up. This is the mission statement and primary theme of Gran Turismo: with the advent of video games and racing simulators, anyone can become a racer. Even a gamer.

The gamer in question is Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a recent university dropout whose main passion in life is racing simulator games. Mardenborough has never even driven a real car, but he proudly brags about having logged hundreds more driving hours than anyone he knows, all thanks to the game Gran Turismo. When his skill in the game catches the attention of an ambitious new coach for the Nissan racing team (Orlando Bloom), Mardenborough is forced to put his money where his mouth is, and prove his skill as a real race car driver. 

The highlight of Gran Turismo are the racing scenes. Emphasizing the parity between simulation and reality, races with real cars are always overlaid with a heads-up-display straight from the game. A marker always points out Mardenborough’s car and position, while his achievements are occasionally lauded by game-like popups (a funny one early on is a giant banner stating “Police Evaded!” while driving his brother home after a night of drinking). Beyond the fun presentation, the races themselves are skillfully shot and edited, the film’s pace keeping up with the cars.

Outside of motorsport, though, Gran Turismo leaves a lot to be desired. Gran Turismo is, ostensibly, based on a true story, but that true story fits suspiciously well into a series of tired storytelling tropes, coming together as little more than “if you work hard you can achieve your dreams”. The audience is shown that, yes, even a gamer can become a racer, but the significance of that idea is never elaborated on. Why was Jann Mardenborough special? What did his achievements mean? A short infographic at the end informs us that he has remained successful, which is nice, but it would be nicer if his character was more interesting. That’s certainly no fault of Madekwe, nor his co-stars. They’re just given painfully little to work with. 

The Blu-Ray includes several featurettes delving into the making of the film. Interviews with director Neill Blomkamp discuss the shooting techniques used to achieve the film’s fast pace and give the audience “something more than just races”. Interviews with Madekwe and Mardenborough (who performed stunts for Madekwe) break down the difficulty of shooting the races, and the unique situation of Mardenborough essentially playing himself in much of the film. An interesting tidbit is that the race at the film’s climax was shot over three weeks, which is mentioned alongside an odd platitude from Blomkampp along the lines of “must have been daunting, but Mardenborough seemed flattered”.

A major theme persists through the featurettes though, most notably in The Plan. A short documentary about how the film came to be, The Plan introduces the true story of Mardenborough. Including several interviews with Mardenborough himself, The Plan begins to talk about his story and GT Academy (the reality show that led to him becoming a racer), but provides very little not already in the (heavily fictionalized film). The film’s biggest weakness carries over directly to the behind-the-scenes: no one involved with the film seems to know or care why this story is important. Just that it really is quite special that a gamer can become a racer. 

The main draw of Gran Turismo are the races. Blomkamp’s passion for action is palpable, and Gran Turismo pushes him towards a crisp, visually-stunning style of filmmaking that’s unusual for him as a director, but which he pulls off beautifully. Beyond the action though, Gran Turismo has little to offer. Great performances only go so far when the script isn’t interested in the story being told.

Thank you to so.da and Sony for the BluRay.