'Gran Turismo' Offers A Mostly Smoothe Ride
The video game to live-action adaptation curse is fading away with each passing project. The Last of Us broke viewers' hearts; Super Mario delighted children (but not the critics). Tetris provided a thriller to a video game involving espionage and real-life figures, making it more than just a game where you combine blocks. Gran Turismo takes a similar approach, where the film is about the game and the people it affected. It is no secret that Gran Turismo is based on a game, especially when a PlayStation logo is plastered on the screen on many occasions. Luckily the film is more rooted in character development than product placement. Sort of.
The story of this film is based on a real one. Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) is an ambitious young man who has an addiction to Gran Turismo. Jann's room in his parent's house has a fully decked-out car seat complete with stick shift, pedals, and a wheel. Jann's father, Steve (Djimon Hounsou), plays the typical parent who disapproves of his son's time being spent on the game with no real goal in life other than to be a racer.
Over in the business side of things at Nissan, Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) has an inspiring idea. What if we find the best racer in Gran Turismo and make them drive in an actual race? The stakes are high to put that much risk for a young inexperienced driver, but Danny takes the chance. After competing with fellow gamers and coming out on top, Danny is selected to race on a real track against real racers. To assist Jann in becoming a champion, an infamous mechanic comes to his aid. Jack Salter (David Harbour) is a tough-as-nails instructor with little room for nonsense. He acts as the coach to Jann, guiding him to a potential future trophy.
The story is extremely familiar to any other inspirational sports flick. We have an underdog who must prove himself in the big leagues, an obnoxious antagonist he must compete against, a love interest, and a big ending competition. There's nothing wrong with the film being formulaic, only that another formulaic racing film did the same type of story way better. That film is Ford v Ferrari. In many ways, this is Sony trying to do their own Ford v Ferarri film, only that they can't do it as well as James Mangold can.
The career of Gran Turismo director Neill Blomkamp is an interesting one; where he started with a bang with District 9 and then directed a collection of critical duds. Much of his career rests in short films. Directing a feature compared to a short is a herculean task to achieve. It's just disappointing that none of Blomkamp's films have lived up to his first feature. Gran Turismo might be the closest thing to his second-best film, which isn't saying much. Gran Turismo is a good film, but it's nothing beyond that, as it follows the blueprint of every inspirational sports drama before it. Having said that, this is the best way you could adapt a racing game to the big screen.
As mentioned earlier, Gran Turismo is based on a true story. How much of it is dramatized is open for interpretation. Unlike Ford v Ferarri, GT doesn't overplay emotions for laughs. You don't have Jann tackling Jack on the front lawn of his house while his wife looks at him humorously, intentionally not intervening, letting men be the Neanderthals they are. The story is told straightforwardly with a muted color palette to give the film a documentary feel.
When the movie takes its actions out on the track, the picture works at its most visceral level. The film utilizes many of the same techniques you'd see in most racing pictures. The camera keeps itself locked on the driver's face; then it cuts quickly to the clutch being pulled and the foot slamming on the gas to emphasize the boost in speed our hero reaches. Then the camera cuts to a wide shot of the action where we see our protagonist gain speed past his opponent. However, this film does something a little different than other racing films.
When the camera cuts to the wide shot where all the action is being shown, the screen displays the stats and numbers you'd see from the video game, making you feel like you're in the game without abusing its usage of CGI. In one of the film's most dazzling sequences, the car that Jann is driving comes apart, morphing into the Gran Turismo setup Jann had at his childhood home. The movie doesn't mask its computer-generated images since it interweaves the source material (a video game) into the plot. As the poster says, "From gamer to racer." Gran Turismo is a nearly unbelievable true story based on a video game.
If you've ever played Gran Turismo, it wouldn't be too unbelievable that you could make a real racer out of an expert from the game. It is the most realistic driving simulator on the market, which is probably why I was terrible at the game as a teenager. Where Gran Turismo works in the action department, it comes up slightly short in the drama department, where many of its scenes play with predictable dialogue and plot points. However, you may not notice some of these things if you're not a cinephile. If you like car racing, you'll love Gran Turismo. If you enjoy inspirational sports stories, you'll probably like Gran Turismo. There's enough substance and heart to make GT work as a story, if only a decent one.
