When you quickly look at the Gran Turismo storyline, it’s hard not to roll your eyes. One of the most remarkable racing films of the century is James Mangold’s Ferrari v Ford. The movie depicts Henry Ford II shedding big, wet, and salty tears as Carroll Shelby raced him around the track.
You can’t just put anyone out there on the track, it has to be the right person. Except for Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) film about a gamer whose skills project success on the actual track is based on a true story. Let me repeat: Gran Turismo is based on a true story, and the subject in question leads his team to 24 Hours of Le Mans glory.
Admittedly, much of it is fictionalized, but the fact that Gran Turismo is anchored in that fact makes the story worthy of a cinematic portrait.
Gran Turismo follows a young man with a gaming console and a dream
The script is centered on the “unbelievable” true story of Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a working-class kid with nothing but a gaming console and a dream. Jann aspires to become a race car driver, leading him to forsake formal education and instead work at a department store while refining his Gran Turismo gaming skills.
His father, Steve (two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou), a former professional footballer, highlights the challenges of attaining professional athlete status. As anticipated in the typical against-all-odds narrative, Jann refuses to heed this advice.
Introducing an eccentric motorsport executive, Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), who extends invitations to numerous accomplished gamers to engage in various Gran Turismo tournaments. The winners head off to an autosports camp, aiming to establish the leader of Moore’s new team.
Gran Turismo is an exceptionally engineered sports biography with a “glazed” IRL storyline
Gran Turismo is based on the famous video game by Polyphony Digital that combines the true story narrative of Jann Mardenborough. The story begins to take shape and become mainstream entertainment when David Harbour’s Jack Salter begins to train Jann during the camp.
Harbour brings his trademark salty comic delivery that he has famously perfected in Stranger Things. He’s a Bruce Willis everyman, always telling the truth to power and pissing off the money men.
That establishes the film’s villain, an arrogant young racer (played by The Wheel of Time’s Josha Stradowski) who understandably doesn’t believe in the experiment. It’s a classic cliche, even the way Harbour’s Salter quits to train Danny’s team despite his skepticism.
Blomkamp plays with the moral and ethical dilemma of essentially casting gamers into one of the most dangerous sports in the world. There is a moment where the film has Jann at the end of an accident, and it’s dismissed as one of the risks of the sport.
That does give the film an arc, which has come under fire for rearranging the timeline to add real-life tragedy depth and stakes. However, we don’t hold other, far more “serious” autobiographical films to that same high standard, so there’s no reason to do that here.
However, yes, most of the real-life story is fictional or reframed, and that’s fine. For instance, Salter is a fictional character that gives the story depth and a second emotional arc. Also, driving for Team Nissan is more about product placement than historical accuracy.
The real-life story, for example, Bloom’s character, is based on Darren Cox, found of the GT Academy, and is just as interesting. Gran Turismo would have benefited from greater fleshing out that character and the struggle to start that dream, even if the movie is too long to begin with.
Is Gran Turismo good or bad?
Gran Turismo is an above-average sports biography that sometimes is too slick for its own good. For instance, while the special effects are excellent, they repeatedly overplay their hand. Gran Turismo is worth watching because it’s an exceptionally engineered sports biography molded to the incredible true story genre. The story is particularly relevant since ESPORTS projects to be massive in decades to come, even making almost 4 billion dollars in 2023.
Verdict: Gran Turismo is an exceptionally engineered sports biography, even if the IRL is a “glazed” storyline. 3/5 stars