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Posted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Sony | Tagged: david harbour, gran turismo, neill blomkamp, orlando bloom, sony
Gran Turismo Review: A Decent Racing Film With Bonus Video Game Quirks
Gran Turismo would be a decent racing movie on its own, but the connection to video games, it being based on a true story, and how they integrate video game mechanics elevates the entire production.
Gran Turismo would be a decent racing movie on its own, but the connection to video games, it being based on a true story, and how they integrate video game mechanics elevates the entire production.
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Summary: Gran Turismo is based on the unbelievable true story of a team of unlikely underdogs – a struggling working-class gamer (Archie Madekwe), a failed former racecar driver (David Harbour), and an idealistic motorsport executive (Orlando Bloom). Together, they risk it all to take on the most elite sport in the world. Gran Turismo is an inspiring, thrilling, and action-packed story that proves that nothing is impossible when you're fueled from within.
Gran Turismo Remains A Strange Choice For A Video Game Adaptation
When it was first announced that Gran Turismo would get a big-screen adaptation, people were confused because this is a racing simulator. How can you make a movie based on a realistic racing simulator? How is that different from just a racing movie with a video game name thrown on top of it? It turned out that saying the film was an adaptation wasn't quite right. The Gran Turismo element of Gran Turismo is more of a framing device and plot point rather than the entire story. It tells the story of Jann Mardenborough and how simulators became an essential part of racing and other sports for years. It's one of those stories that sounds wild enough to be fake, but the fact that it really did happen.
What you expect from a film like this is excellent racing scenes, and director Neill Blomkamp does a pretty good job of framing and shooting a racing scene. When Blomkamp and the rest of the team integrate video game elements, such as putting things on the race track that would be there on the screen in the game or having the car come apart and come back together to show it working, those are the coolest moments of the film. However, those moments aren't used enough, and they spend a lot of time talking about how much Jann knows these tracks because of the games.
It feels like Gran Turismo only leans into that story element in the final race portrayed. We see Jann struggling after making it into a real race for rather obvious reasons, but we also don't see him do weird, off-the-cuff things that someone familiar with the game would do. So, instead, he comes off as a green driver who needs to improve until the final race when we see how the simulator stuff has helped him along. It doesn't help that this movie is too long at two hours and fifteen minutes. They should have cut thirty minutes and marked it down to 1:45 to make things much snappier. There was one entire scene they could and should have left out that would have helped with the pacing problems.
Here's the thing, though, about being based on a true story that already sounds like something made up: you don't have to do that much to make the story interesting. Gran Turismo has fallen into the same trap that so many "based on a true story" movies do and moved some things around. While that works when it comes to life events, it's different when it comes to tragedies. In the film, they show Mardenborough's crash in Nürburgring that left one spectator dead. That crash occurred in 2015, but the movie frames it as a tragedy that happened right before Mardenborough and his team would race and place third at Le Mans in 2013. Again, this entire story already sounds like the kind of story that movies are made for; why did they need to exploit a very real terrible accident and a very real death to make a traditional three-act structure? Mardenborough has gone on the record about why he felt like the crash needed to be included, but this is something that many "based on a true story" movies do, and some offenses are worse than others. This one is pretty gross, and there had to be another way for the Mardenborough of the film to have his "phoenix rising from the ashes" moment.
As for the cast, everyone does a pretty good job. This is only star Archie Madekwe's sixteenth role ever, and he had to hold his own against titans like David Harbour and Orlando Bloom, who could have easily steamrolled him and ran away with this entire movie. However, Madekwe does an excellent job of feeling like an ordinary person thrown into extraordinary events, which is all you can ask for when it comes to a story like this. The real Mardenborough was on hand to do all of the stunt work for Madekwe, which adds to the racing scenes, knowing that the man we are watching race the cars is actually the person this movie is about. Bloom is pretty good as executive Danny Moore, who is approaching this whole thing from a different angle than Harbour's Jack Salter, a former racer and now head engineer mentoring Mardenborough and all of the other gamers called to their camp. Harbour is the king of coming off like a grumpy dad, which is what you need for a role like this, and he also does an excellent job of making sure that we know he isn't being hard on these kids because he's an asshole; he's being hard on them because he doesn't want blood on his hands.
Gran Turismo is about what you can expect from a late summer blockbuster entry and that it's okay. There isn't much else out there for it to compete with, and it's good to see Blomkamp trying out a new genre. He can direct pretty decent racing scenes; who knew? This story doesn't sound real, yet the screenwriters decided to try and amp it up anyway by exploiting a real-life tragedy for no reason. While it must have been a pivotal moment in Mardenborough's life, making it something that it wasn't in this film isn't how you explain that moment to the world–not when it involves the death and injuries of other people. We've seen worst August entries, but we've certainly seen better, too.
Gran Turismo
6.5/10
Gran Turismo is about what you can expect from a late summer blockbuster entry in that it's okay. There isn't much else out there for it to compete with, and it's good to see Blomkamp trying out a new genre.
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