Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo made it clear within the first few title cards that this film was “based on a true story.” The two-hour film, titled fondly after the PlayStation video game series, follows the story of Jaan Mardenborough, a British motorsports racecar driver who was the youngest winner of the GT Academy Competition. While the story of a young kid turning video games into an impressive career as a professional driver is inspiring, Gran Turismo fails to be anything more than a regurgitation of a Wikipedia page offering few moments of emotion or thrill. 

The first act quickly establishes a bunch of contextualized stories. We watch the game created by Kazunori Yamauchi (Takehiro Hira), accompanied by some passionate graphics and montages showing the intricate detail put into the game. We see Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), a Nissan Marketing Director, successfully pitch and explain the GT Academy to Nissan and Gran Turismo creators. And we are introduced to Jaan (Archie Madekwe), a University drop-out who lives for the game, ‘Gran Turismo.’

Jaan’s father and former pro soccer player, Steve, played beautifully by Djimon Hounsou, is worried his son’s video game obsession will leave him nowhere in life. Reluctantly, he watches his son pack and leave for the GT Academy to hopefully become a professional driver. There, he meets Jack Salter (David Harbour), a twenty-five year racing veteran now turned head engineer after he quit his role on another racing team. Salter’s job is simple. To prove that gamers cannot become drivers. Through the next chunk of this film, we watch Jaan and the other gamers get pushed physically and mentally through various racing tests and exercises. 

As expected, Jaan wins the competition by a millionth of a second. His next task, finish at least fourth in a race to earn his racing license and a sponsorship from Nissan. He, Salter, and Moore go across the world where Jaan learns racing “in the big leagues” is very different from both his gaming console and the academy. Jaan’s biggest foe–Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski), a spoiled, bully racecar driver with very little background, character development, or arch. Jaan can’t seem to handle the pressure or dirty tricks used by Capa or another German driver (Niall McShea). Luckily (or rather, expectedly), Jaan pulls through in the last race and earns his license and sponsorship. He also earns the love of a girl from back home, Audrey (Maeve Courtier-Lilley). Not bad for a gamer. 

The high life for Jaan comes to a screeching halt when he is in a freak accident that kills a spectator. It is devastating. He is unable and unwilling to speak to his parents, his girlfriend, and barely to Moore or Salter. In a particularly moving moment, the moment we all expect from sports films, Jaan’s mentor, Salter, reveals that he, too, was involved in a fatal crash. Unable to come back from that trauma, he quit and “never got to see how great he could be.” Harbour and Madekwe offered a quiet, intimate moment between a mentor and athlete. Much to my disappointment, Salter, although inspired by real people, is an entirely fictional character. So this moment, maybe one of two moments that were truly moving, was nothing more than a dramatized sequence that doesn’t completely portray the tragedy accurately, meant to invoke some kind of hope for the third act–when Jaan returns. 

So yes, Jaan returns and races in ‘Le Mans,’ placing third and becoming “immortal.” The 24-hour race, although relatively entertaining to watch, eventually lacked any sort of thrill and excitement. The best part of the third act was when Jaan and his father finally came face to face for the first time since Jaan left for the academy. Housnou, although only featured in minimal scenes, truly carried all of the emotion of the film. His genuine tears, seeing his boy grow up, face success and tragedy, and come back from all of it was truly beautiful. 

This is where the true issue lies with the film. It was all surface level. Jaan’s story is inspiring and, honestly, pretty damn cool. A gamer to pro athlete is a fun and exciting story to tell, but this film did nothing more than summarize a Wikipedia page on his story, much like Wikipedia, adding and changing a few facts. While it is understood that all biopics take creative licensing to tell complicated stories in a way that makes a good one to two-hour spectacle, the changes in this film only made Jaan’s story more linear. He got into the academy, won, raced, got his license, crashed, and got up again to win another race. Right there, I just saved you a ten-dollar ticket. 

Writers ​​Jason Hall, Zach Baylin, and Alex Tse needed to push themselves farther. The film could’ve chosen a number of avenues to take, like Jaan’s relationship with his father, his father’s own professional athletic story, Jaan’s relationship to other other racers, just the academy racers, or even Jaan’s personal growth. Instead, a lot of characters, including the academy competitors and the professional racers, were thrown on the screen for a few minutes just to push the plot along. We really only have time to get to know the three stars of the film.

Madekwe offered a nice performance as a young boy trying to become a man. He convincingly played someone who, at times, was afraid, insecure, and unsure of what he was doing. Throughout the film, you watched him mature and saw his confidence grow. Bloom, gave a rather underwhleming performance. Really, it felt like there was no performance at all. He read the lines of the script, but I couldn’t see any passion in his character like Madekwe tried to convey. His character felt flat and really just a catalyst that ensured Harbour/Salter made it into the film.

Harbour, known primarily for his role in Stranger Things, plays the perfect dad or mentor. His presence on screen is both soft and intimidating. He commands presence but also reveals deep feelings and vulnerability. His relationship with Madekwe/Jaan was the most convincing, and this film might have been more successful if it really dove deeper into just those two characters. The rest of the supporting cast was rather unmemorable, with the exception of Housnou.

With the lack of character development, my only hope was the combination of cinematography (by Jacques Jouffret), editing (by Austyn Daines, Eric Freidenberg, and Colby Parker Jr.), and score (by Lorne Balfe and Andrew Kawczynski) would make the racing scenes more exciting. After maybe the first one or two, the sequences felt repetitive. Like the game, every now and then, graphics were added to the sequences to either show what place Jaan was in or what he was thinking. There needed to be more. Blur the line between reality and game, or get more creative with how you film fast cars–play with time, framing, anything. The entire production really had a lot of potential and wasn’t necessarily bad, but no one, cast or crew, pushed it to the next level. 

Overall, the film isn’t a bad watch. It’s a compelling story for those of us into racing or sports stories. As I was leaving the theater, all I felt was the sudden urge to drive a fast car. If anything, the movie makes a better Nissan ad than film. 

Review Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas

Feature Image Credit to PlayStation Productions and Columbia Pictures via The Daily Beast