Gran Turismo review: Racing drama spins its wheels
District 9 director Neill Blomkamp veers off course with this true story of a PlayStation gamer who became a professional driver
Film Reviews Gran Turismo
While it’s been ripe for mockery on Twitter—sorry, X—Gran Turismo does have a basis in reality. Indeed, Sony lucked out here, having an actual story to attach to a story-less IP, and an aspirational one at that. After all, what gamer doesn’t want to think their hobby isn’t training them for something real and worthwhile? Yet for all its laborious efforts to throttle past expectations, Neill Blompkamp’s Gran Turismo is too unconfident, too distracted, too rote, and simply too short on gas to earn a place on the winner’s podium.
After a brief but bothersome prologue that insists repeatedly that the events depicted in the film actually happened—as if this is the first movie to be “based on a true story”—Gran Turismo introduces us to Jann Mardenborough, played by Archie Madekwe. In his performance, Madekwe’s palpable nerves aren’t because Jann has found the one thing he’s good at, and wants to pursue it for fame and fortune, but because racing may be the only thing he’s ever been good at. Ironically, this suspense feels underserved by the movie’s own logline. The real Mardenborough was a college dropout in 2011 when he tried out for the GT Academy, a now-defunct invitational where obsessives of PlayStation’s Gran Turismo racing simulation competed to sit behind wheels for real. Mardenborough wasn’t the only winner, but he remains its biggest success story. Thus, he has a movie, with a script credited to Zach Baylin and Jason Hall.
Reminiscent of his previous films like District 9 and memed-to-death Chappie, Blomkamp again utilizes an immersive verité camera that grounds Gran Turismo in a familiar reality. But the lack of details betray its period setting, something meticulous gamers not unlike Mardenborough himself will nitpick. Beyond recycling Gran Turismo UI onto live-action footage, sometimes hilariously, Blomkamp conceptualizes Mardenborough’s zen state into a symbiosis of gaming and racing, which he long ago mastered in his bedroom, on his own terms. To see it unfold is enough to temporarily suspend all doubt that Gran Turismo has what it takes to zoom past naysayers and join the likes of celebrated true-to-life racing dramas like Ron Howard’s Rush and James Mangold’s Ford V Ferrari.
Too bad it doesn’t. Gran Turismo overall feels misshapen and mangled, not unlike some of these cars after a few dozen laps. It doesn’t just speed, it breathlessly races from one set-piece race to the next, rendering Mardenborough’s unlikely journey into an incomprehensible dream. Incomprehensible not because it’s hard to believe an aimless gamer became a pro athlete, but because Blomkamp seems genuinely disinterested in telling a legible story with rhythm and timely execution. Gran Turismo isn’t Hell, but it is a purgatory loop where the majority of its characters, real or not, rarely exhibit authentic humanity. Instead, they come off like objects arranged in a music video edited by A.I.
There are bright spots in Gran Turismo, and not just the chrome paint job on an antagonist’s Lamborghini. The film’s racing sequences are dutifully executed, although their structural inconsistency is a troublesome hurdle. A woefully overlooked Djimon Honsou, as Mardenborough’s father, presents more nuance here than in any of his recent Marvel and DC appearances. Similarly, co-star David Harbour reminds us why he became a better known quantity after Stranger Things. In his role as the fictional Jack Salter, a dry and caustic coach/mechanic who comes across like a vengeful karate sensei, he is indisputably one of the few reasons to find any enjoyment in Gran Turismo.
Throughout the movie, Jack advises Jann to commit, to invest himself fully into decisions while on the track as they mean the difference between victory and defeat, between life and death. But Blompkamp doesn’t learn from his own movie. Whereas Jann’s master maneuver is to weave away from his opponents—to drive outside the lines, in a rather literal sense—Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo stubbornly adheres to the rigidity of a paint-by-numbers drama whose only novelty is that it’s based on a video game.
When Gran Turismo slows down, and it does so at the strangest of times, one can almost feel the full weight of its intended melodrama. It’s not just the seconds lost and seconds gained by Mardenborough on the track. It’s his self-reflection, his reconnection to his family, and for a small stretch, his guilt from a freak accident that ended in a fatality. But Gran Turismo lacks the concentration to feel like it’s really going anywhere. Instead, there’s the nagging feeling it’s just spinning its wheels.
Gran Turismo opens in theaters on August 25
51 Comments
Has there ever been a director with as much obviously squandered promise as Blomkamp? The first two thirds of “District 9″ remain one of the most startling things I’ve ever seen in a movie theater, but the ending was a mess and then… every other movie he made was also a mess. He can still direct the hell out of an action sequence, but he seems to have no idea what makes for a compelling narrative and at this point clearly no interest in finding out.
I’d go further and say it’s all been downhill since Alive In Joburg…
I don’t blame you if you’ve repressed this, but…Tom Hooper. Went from Academy Award winner for The King’s Speech to……er…Or possibly Michael Cimino.
If the butthole cut had been released it would have been a different story. I’m sure that would have gotten an Oscar or two.But seriously, Cats displayed many of the problems of his earlier Les Mis (although being a fan of Les Mis in general I actually liked it a bit better than most people). Hooper seems to like to literalize everything in a stage production so you have his Les Mis look like a serious historical drama which doesn’t really fit and his Cats with the creepy cat/human hybrids.
It would’ve been better if someone explained to him what the fuck the uncanny valley was. Either have hyper-real CGI cats singing and dancing and voiced by humans, or have more humans who are more…abstractedly feline, not this Doc Moreau madness. What shits me in that gif is how his ear bends down to his hand – that’s not how cats cleaning their ears works, dammit. YOU CAN’T EVEN FUCKING GET THAT RIGHT, CORDEN.
Blomkamp has Zac Snyder Syndrome. He knows how to shoot a great scene but has no idea how to tell a story.
Brian De Palma? Duncan Jones?
Hey, hey, hey, Brian de Palma made four undisputed masterpieces across four decades… and those are obviously Phantom of the Paradise, The Untouchables, Snake Eyes, and Mission to Mars.
I recently tried re watching The Untouchables and it definitely does not hold up.
And it is weird how ahistorical it is for no good reason. Like it has Ness kill Frank Nitti when in fact Nitti becane head of the Chicago Organization after Al Capone was arrested.The only good thing was this was the movie that really gave Sean Connery the start of his post-Bond career (yes, he was in things like the bonkers Zardoz before this but The Untouchables made him back into a star).
Mission to Mars contained a scene in which I seriously yelled in the theater “that makes no scientific sense!” when one of the characters finds an ancient model of Martian DNA (with just a few base pairs) and says “It looks like human DNA, but it’s missing two chromosomes at the end!”.
But while that movie wasnt one of his finest, he did make a number of decent thrillers even if most of them were pastiches of Hitchcock, whom he idolized.
DePalma had a mostly solid 20 year run from Carrie to Casualties of War. I don’t have any explanation for what happened to him after that, but you can’t call a guy who’s 17th film was The Untouchables as a case of squandered talent.Jones is definitely a strong second to Blomkamp here.
“I don’t have any explanation for what happened to him after that,”The fact that you don’t is exactly my point. After the first Mission Impossible/mid 90s, it was all downhill as far as big and small budget flops. His flops are equal to his successes. He’s pretty much washed up and forgotten now.
Anyone seen Oats Studios? Fucking embarassing…
Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo stubbornly adheres to the rigidity of a paint-by-numbers drama whose only novelty is that it’s based on a video game.
Does it follow the Sports Movie formula?People make jokes about Musical Biopic Formula, but Sports Movies kind of have a distinct formula as well. The grizzled mentor, the point of discouragement, the comeback, the disapproving parental figure, etc, etc.
Years ago M. Night Shyamalan was the exemplar director who had broken out with a hit genre movie and then proceeded to disappoint with his next ones. He’s recovered somewhat now, so the poster boys for that now would appear to be Blomkamp and Duncan Jones. I had speculated in the past that a low budget horror movie might be the thing to get back on track (as with Shyamalan’s “The Visit”), but Blomkamp just previously flopped with “Demonic”.
richard kelly speedrun.
That would still take like 20 hours, depending whether you watch the good version of Donnie Darko or the long version. One of these days I’ll clear my schedule, drink a cup of coffee, and finish Southland Tales. Then I’ll start The Box, watch the first hour, and then shelve it until 2026 or so.
southland tales has aged very very well.
I know right? Gellar’s “Krysta Now” character (a former porn star turned mainstream celebrity and “influencer”) seemed an absurd concept at the time, but these days she doesn’t seem too different from reality.
Y’all just keep telling yourselves Moon was a hit.
Fair point, it was well received but didn’t make that much money.
He’s recovered somewhat now…Has he? Old was bad and Knock at the Cabin was just sorta there.
Making video games more cinematic is going way better than making movies out of video games.
Kinda but not really though? Videogames seem to be veering away from trying to become cinematic. That cinematic trend was more a thing in the previous generation. I remember the The Order: 1886 debacle.
I guess you didn’t play Death Stranding? The most cinematic video game I’ve ever played and it’s friggen awesome. You beat the last boss and then it basically becomes a ~90 minute movie, nevermind all the cutscenes before that.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is pretty cinematic and so is D4 from what I’ve seen.
I didn’t read your spoiler for Death Stranding but you should delete it if you can.
You’re safe reading it, the game is 4 years old and what I posted is not a spoiler at all.
Right, a Hideo Kojima game having a boss and lots of cutscenes isn’t exactly a spoiler.
well, death stranding is a 4 year old game that was in development for close to 10, so i wouldn’t exactly call it contemporary. plus kojima has been chasing cinema since back in the 8 bit days. he’ll always be a guy who makes games that want to be movies.if you look at what the industry is going after these days it’s all live service. they’ve moved past chasing cinema.
He’s making a sequel to it and is really good at making cinematic video games so I don’t think that is contrary to my point at all: Video games being cinematic is going way better than movies made out of video games.
I’m hoping Larian makes bank off of BG3 and that turns the live service tide a bit.
yeah fair i’m just arguing for the sake of it mostly.
You beat the last boss and then it basically becomes a ~90 minute movieIt…what? Fuck that shit. I’ve got places to be.
I did play Death Stranding and loved it, but it’s definitely from the previous gen, kinda proving my point. Though, Kojima will do his extremely cinematic thing no matter what. He’ll be an outsider no matter the trends. Baldur’s Gate 3 also doesn’t exactly feel like a cinematic game. It has good cinematics, sure, but it’s decidedly a CRPG otherwise.When I think cinematic games I think of games filled with big, scripted set pieces, a lot of cutscenes, a strong and mostly linear narrative, probably quick time events along the way. Games like the aforementioned The Order: 1886, but also Uncharted, Max Payne 3 and The Last Of Us. And while there’s still games like that around, I feel like the popular trend is moving away from them.
Right but your point doesn’t actually have a bearing on mine.
Is this really a “video game movie” though since it’s not really set in the universe of the game?
The Variety review of this seems to want it to be nommed for best picture…this review is closer to what I actually expect. I tried to watch a few of the short films that Blomkamp has up on Netflix basically as pitches for features (oats)…and they were incredibly derivative and truly terrible…so I don’t have a lot of faith this is an incredible turnaround. Sadly. I did like District 9.
Even if this were good, I doubt it would have done well. Gamers aren’t going to see a car movie, race fans aren’t going to see a movie about a gamer.
As a race movie it seems like it’s the typical formula. Guy who isn’t a racer but has some sort of potentially relatable skill tries to break in to the racing business with…whatever results.
“There are bright spots in Gran Turismo, and not just the chrome paint job on an antagonist’s Lamborghini”Fucking barf, who wrote this intro-to-cinema review? And what the fuck does this even mean:“In his performance, Madekwe’s palpable nerves aren’t because Jann has found the one thing he’s good at, and wants to pursue it for fame and fortune, but because racing may be the only thing he’s ever been good at”
This seems like a PR ouroboros. They created an academy for gamers to generate PR, thus manufacturing this “true story,” they can turn into a movie for more PR.
Yeah I had no idea this was a thing that actually happened until the trailer came out. And then it was like “well clearly it has to go well because if it didn’t why would Sony build an entire movie around how playing GT wasn’t like driving the real thing?”
“Let’s make a movie about a gamer who defies the odds and becomes a real-life race car driver!”“Okay – I have the perfect guy. He’s only killed one person since we let him start racing real cars!”“Awesome!”… some executive meeting somewhere…
Well it was this or the CoD gamer that became a real special forces operator (I don’t think that’s happened).
The choice to show his performance at the Spa 24 Hours in real time, scored by Garbage’s I Think I’m Paranoid on endless loop was a bold loop.Although, if they didn’t have the real life angle to lean on here, the next best thing might’ve been a time loop movie, just running license tests through endless failure like the death montage in Edge of Tomorrow.
Mild potshots at comic book movies aside, Djimon Honsou’s tiny role in that “Black Panther as Star-Lord” What If episode ruled, he was so excited.
Sadly, “woefully overlooked Djimon Honsou” might as well be his full name. Rarely has so much talent been squandered by so many directors (and, I suppose, the actor has to take some responsibility too).
I’m not going to blame Blomkamp for this as he’s probably not really hugely at fault here, but also, can we stop giving him work? We’re done with him. He’s done. It’s not working out.
OR give him a good budget and let him do whatever the fuck he wants for a Netflix thing, see if he can respark the mojo.
Oof, someone hasn’t seen Oats Studios.
…what gamer doesn’t want to think their hobby isn’t training them for something real and worthwhile?Double negative, asshole. Sit in the corner and think about what you did.