This review was written during the 2023 Writer's Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes. This motion picture wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of unionized artists who deserve fair liveable wages.
At the end of the 2006 motion picture Cars, Lightning McQueen observes that the Piston Cup trophy he’s been obsessed with for so long “is just an empty cup.” It's a moment that's meant to signify that this brash racecar has come a long way and realized what's truly important in life. This particular line of dialogue, though, could have also been referring to the new film Gran Turismo. Much like a Piston Cup trophy, Gran Turismo is also hollow and meaningless. Director Neil Blomkamp, after previously delivering original pieces of sci-fi storytelling, has now helmed a late capitalism nightmare that proudly boasts about being a commercial for massive corporations. This newest example of how subpar video game movies can be wields as much genuine compassion for the working class as a 2023 country song that debuts atop the Billboard Hot 100 charts and contains as much fun as your average trip to the dentist.
Based on the video game series Gran Turismo and based on the true story of racer Jann Mardenborough, Gran Turismo begins with an explanation of the history of its titular video game that feels indistinguishable from a commercial. It's a very promising start. From there, Jason Hall and Zach Baylin's screenplay takes viewers into the world of Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a video game-obsessed twenty-something with seemingly unobtainable dreams of engaging in the world of racing. For this working-class guy, the closest he'll ever get is his treasured Gran Turismo video games. However, a new competition spearheaded by marketing executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) could give Mardenborough the chance he's been waiting for. Moore's concocted a scheme to have veteran racer Jack Salter (David Harbour) train a bunch of gamers to become professional racecar drivers. Satler is skeptical about the whole concept but the conviction and know-how of Mardenborough makes him believe that maybe this plan can go somewhere.
If there's anything audiences should take away from Gran Turismo above all else, it's that hinging so much of a movies drama on whether or not "sim-racers" (video game players experienced in "simulated" races) will be accepted by the racing world is a terrible idea. No matter how many times people say the phrase "sim-racers", it never stops sounding stupid. Any potential investment in the proceedings gets thrown out with the bathwater once those two words drop out of somebody's lips. It doesn't help that the underlying stakes of that acceptance never feel tangible or interesting. The intent behind this drama is that, if "sim-racers" are accepted into "snooty" races, maybe more working-class folks will be allowed into this sporting arena. With the surface-level execution of this script, though, Gran Turismo's plot seems to hinge solely on whether or not Mardenborough will be able to prove that more PlayStation promotion can exist at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
These are the kinds of thoughts that race through one's mind as Gran Turismo rolls through a cycle of familiar plot points with all the speed of a busted jaloppy. Something else that proves hard to dismiss? The pervasively ugly color scheme and visual aesthetic of the whole movie. Gray seeps into so much of the film and the big races always tend to take place in days dominated by overcast. Once he's entered the world of professional racing, Mardenborough walks from one sparsely decorated sleek space to another, with little in the way of bright hues or distinctive details in the various sets to exude a sense of personality to the character's various backdrops. It's all so drab looking and makes the racing world Mardenborough has always dreamed of entering seem so repellant. Who wants to spend their days working to the bone in places so sterile? Any of the tactility Blomkamp brought to his earliest directorial efforts is nowhere to be found throughout Gran Turismo.
Even the big racing scenes in Gran Turismo, surely the one saving grace of this subpar blockbuster, aren't anything to write home about. Blomkamp and cinematographer Jacques Jouffret really love using footage captured by drones for these sequences, which sometimes have a fun sweeping quality to them. However, generally, lengthy scenes where fast cars go zoom aren't realized in an especially exhilarating fashion. Even visual flourishes that translate details from the Gran Turismo video game onto the actual tracks Mardenborough is racing on aren't especially imaginative. Awkward cuts between actual automobiles and CG doubles for those vehicles as well as clumsy pieces of editing further undercut the potential excitement of these sequences. The latter element of the production, handled by Colby Parker, Jr. and Austyn Daines, is especially distracting whenever the camera is just capturing people talking to one another. Why does an early speech from Satler to the prospecting gamer racers have so many awkward cuts to random objects and people? Who knows.
There's little to capture the heart or captivate the senses in Gran Turismo, not even in terms of delivering thrills that temporarily exhilarating in the moment. It's so mechanically realized from top to bottom that its inspirational sports movie narrative beats never feel human enough while any stabs at human drama feel like a robot trying to mimic what "romance" or "male bonding" looks like. The aloof nature of the whole project only becomes briefly interestingly bad when Gran Turismo kicks off its third act with a miscalculated dark turn that brings grave mortality into the world of Mardenborough. A lengthy advertisement for PlayStation suddenly trying to grapple with an actual human being's death (and reducing this person to just being an unnamed plot point) goes about as well as you'd expect. It's staggeringly mishandled, but it's also a distinctively memorable poor choice, at least. The rest of the feature, save for Djimon Hounsou putting in a terrific supporting turn, is just a tedious slog that feels six times as long as Jeanne Dielman. If you love lengthy unskippable ads on YouTube, you’re gonna get your motor running over Gran Turismo.
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