I remember when I saw the trailers for Gran Turismo. Some kid is good at a video game and gets a chance to go the real thing by racing cars. Quite frankly, I thought it was some kind of Last Starfighter remake or something. Then the trailer would reveal the whole thing was based on a true story: some kid who was very good at a racing simulator actually became a race car driver. Now, I suppose some people behind the whole thing might just have inspired by The Last Starfighter, but the point stands that the movie doesn’t appear to have been inspired by that movie.
Then, when I saw the movie, I spent a portion of it wondering why the actress playing the racer’s mother looked familiar only to watch the closing credits and realize she was one of the Spice Girls.
Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) wants to race cars, but as he comes from a more working class background, the only way he can is by playing Gran Turismo on his PlayStation. Meanwhile, Nissan UK Marketing guy Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) has an idea he pitches his bosses: since a whole lot of people play this game while they don’t seem to care much for Nissan cars, why not get the top players to train with a professional racing engineer and become an actual racer sponsored by Nissan? That’s sure to inspire people to buy Nissan cars or something. The Nissan execs OK the plan so long as Danny can get a good engineer to make sure the highly dangerous sport is actually as safe as possible for some inexperienced drivers. That engineer turns out to be former racer-turned-mechanic Jack Salter (David Harbour). Jack doesn’t think it’s possible for this to even happen, but the player recruits all have dreams to do this, and Jann wins a spot at the Nissan training academy.
It turns out that driving a simulator is a lot different from driving in a real race. Cars get hot, G-forces can be unbearable, and some of these guys have never even driven a real car before. Even if Jann gets past this stage, other racers and apparently his pit crew and mechanics will hate him for even being there. Racing is sport for the wealthy. Middle class folks like Jann don’t really have a chance there. But it may be that his simulator skills will allow him to compete. Does that mean he can win?
So, my general feeling on a movie like this is it has to make me care about something that normally I just don’t care about. In this case, that’s sports (any sport) and gaming (never really been a gamer). And this isn’t just any sport but what I might term a niche sport, namely racing. Since the movie’s various races take place in countries other than the United States, the place I call home, it’s not really a sport I hear much about once you step away from Nascar. To make me care, the movie needs to have some charming characters and a stake I can get into, something akin to Ford vs Ferrari where Christian Bale and Matt Damon’s performances and characters gave the movie something for me to enjoy despite a lack of interest or knowledge in cars or European racing.
Unfortunately, Gran Turismo never quite gets there. Part of it is, owing no doubt to the fact that the movie was produced by PlayStation Studios, the movie frequently adds video game graphics to scenes of Jann behind the wheel. It makes the movie feel less like a sports movie and more like a video game ad disguised as a sports movie. Can I bring myself to care whether or not Jann can prove that a sim driver can drive as well as the real thing? Not really. Bloom’s character is inconsistent about whether or not he’s even helpful, the normally reliable Harbour is basically a cliche, and the most interesting things about the movie is the real Jann was his character’s stunt double and this movie has one of the most eclectic soundtracks I’ve heard in a while. Maybe if the movie had less to say about how awesome a video game I would never play is (I’ve never seen the point of racing simulators even as video games go) and just focused on Jann’s story without bringing the game up quite so much, I might have gotten into it. But instead, I saw a standard sports movie with a bunch of game graphics popping up all over the place.
Grade: C
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