Gran Turismo Review: Another Video Game Movie Stuck Going In Circles
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being reviewed here wouldn't exist.
At this point, the "video game movie" classification feels just about as broad and changeable as that of a "superhero movie." Is there any point in lumping together movies like "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" or "Detective Pikachu" with "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" or "Uncharted"? (Does anyone even remember "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" or "Uncharted"?) By the same token, any lingering talk of an all-expansive "curse" associated with these adaptations increasingly comes across less like some inexplicable barrier that studios have (mostly) been unable to cross, and more to do with the idea that simply trying to translate a medium as idiosyncratic and immersive as video games into the wildly different language of film has always been self-defeating. It's like fighting with both hands tied behind your back ... or, in this case, entering a race at Le Mans when all your racing experience comes from a PlayStation game.
"Gran Turismo" might as well be the new poster child for why these movies desperately need a new approach. Director Neill Blomkamp's latest, a notable swerve into journeyman territory after his previous original efforts failed to pan out one way or another, is hardly the worst video game movie — or even the worst Blomkamp film, for that matter. (Pour one out for the complete and utter lack of "Chappie"-like memes that "Gran Turismo" will ever inspire.) But it sure feels like a death knell of sorts for this little subgenre of movies; a cautionary tale for anybody still under the delusion that they're the ones who can finally make fetch happen. Because rarely before has a movie's source material felt so diametrically opposed to the needs of a functional narrative, to the point of self-sabotage.
Frustratingly, this is one racing movie that's perpetually stuck in neutral.
Spinning its wheels
Based on a true story, "Gran Turismo" gets around the notion of a one-to-one adaptation of the video game series of the same name by technically wearing the skin of a sports biopic ... to some seriously mixed results. Following automobile company Nissan's bizarre, desperate, and frankly dangerous gambit to make headlines on the circuit (which, yes, actually happened), we're quickly introduced to Orlando Bloom's smooth-talking and occasionally slimy marketing executive Danny Moore. Dead-set on turning the best "Gran Turismo" gamers in the world into the best racecar drivers — for reasons that the frequently uninspired script by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin (with Hall and Alex Tse receiving story credit) largely handwaves away in the hopes audiences won't question it too much — he teams up with washed-up racer Jack Salter (David Harbour, fully understanding the assignment) to train this next generation of hotshots.
The only problem, of course, is that the odds are already so absurdly stacked against main character Jann Mardenborough ("Midsommar" actor Archie Madekwe, trying his level best to turn a collection of tropes into a person) that every attempt to play up this rags-to-riches angle only ever amounts to putting a hat on a hat. For Jann, a young British teen who shuns his parents' pleas for a sensible and practical career in favor of his racing driver aspirations, thousands of hours of playing "Gran Turismo" and trash-talking his friends over PlayStation Network somehow makes him uniquely qualified for Danny's harebrained ploy. Not helping matters is the fact that it all seems to come so easily to him and the other would-be racers in his class once they're chosen to attend the GT Academy. Much of the training scenes under Salter's withering eye are compressed into breezy montage sequences, thereby robbing these early portions of the film of any actual momentum or stakes.
Problems under the hood
Yet the sheer silliness of the premise, combined with the speed at which Jann ends up behind the wheel with his life completely turned upside down, doesn't entirely account for the film's fundamental disconnect. From a visual storytelling point of view, the pervasive flat lighting and straightforward point-and-shoot approach for the first half of "Gran Turismo" does the story absolutely no favors, making much of the action in the early going feel more like leftover B-roll footage from the initial seasons of BBC's "Top Gear." But the most debilitating issues make themselves known during the actual racing sequences — which accounts for far less screen time in this plodding, 135-minute-long affair than you might expect.
Here, the film's constant obligation to recreate the experience of playing the games completely undercuts any sense of staging Blomkamp and director of photography Jacques Jouffret may have wanted to accomplish. "Ford v Ferrari," this is not. Who knew that awfully stiff, third-person camera angles locked in behind Jann's racecar while on the track, an overabundance of unmotivated drone shots (which will soon have even the biggest Michael Bay cynics rue the day they dismissed last year's "Ambulance"), and repeated freeze-frames filled with video-gamey icons indicating whose car is whose and what place they're in would combine to zap these racing scenes of any energy and life? By the time the movie is telling us to stand up and cheer or gawk in horror at the carnage, all that "Gran Turismo" and its haphazard editing manages to pull off is the mindless experience of watching your buddies play video games (in the Dark Ages before Xbox Live or PlayStation Network, that is) as you wait your turn to sub in.
The most fascinating moments of "Gran Turismo," unfortunately, only ever take place in the margins. There's a hint of a compelling thread between Bloom's marketing-obsessed Danny and Harbour's far more practical Jack that echoes the relationship between a studio executive and a filmmaker chafing at the constraints of the blockbuster system, but this is dropped as readily as it's introduced. Actor Djimon Hounsou, the reigning champion of franchise actors making the absolute most of extremely limited screen time, once again does far more solid work than such a thankless role as Jann's unsupportive and overprotective father deserves. And maybe this is just the sucker in me, but the occasionally rousing final act at least gets the blood pumping — even if it's in a too-little, too-late effort to make up for the poorly-paced and seemingly endless middle act.
In the end, "Gran Turismo" can't escape the feeling of being actively held back at every turn — by the confines of video game conventions, by a painfully trope-laden script, or simply by the fact that everything this video game movie wants to achieve has already been done better before. If you want to imagine the exhilarating experience of getting behind the wheel of a souped-up racecar, there's probably some VR game out there that'll do the trick. If you'd rather get that feeling from an actual movie that understands how to use the medium's strengths to its advantage, well, maybe just revisit "Top Gun: Maverick," instead.
/Film rating: 4 out of 10