Movie Review: Gran Turismo

(Note: Gran Turismo doesn't open wide until the 24th, but Sony held sneak previews of it over the weekend and will be holding 4 more this Friday-Sunday.)

Considering how massive the PlayStation brand is to Sony's business portfolio, it's kind of shocking how little their film and television studio has utilized it. Believe it or not, last year's long-in-development film version of Uncharted was the first adaptation of one of their own video games that Sony had ever released. Their efforts have intensified this year as they brought The Last of Us and Twisted Metal to the small screen via HBO and Peacock respectively and there are adaptations of God of War, Ghosts of Tsuhima and Horizon that were in various stages of development prior to the start of the WGA strikes in May. 

Rounding out a busy year for Sony's PlayStation-inspired endeavors is Gran Turismo-which uses the popular racing simulator as a way to tell the pretty incredible story of how Jann Mardenborough went from playing Gran Turismo at his parents' house in Cardiff, Wales to becoming a professional racer in the Super GT series within a year's time. 

While there are clearly plenty of liberties taken by director Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) and the writing duo of Jason Hall (American Sniper, Thank You for Service) and Zach Baylin (Creed III, King Richard) to turn Mardenborough's improbable journey into a classic Hollywood sports underdog narrative, the odds that were stacked against him are so massive that it makes this fantastical dramazation easy to buy into. Mardenborough ended up beating out about 90,000 people to win a competition in 2011 called GT Academy-that granted the best Gran Turismo players in the world a chance to compete for the chance to join Nissan's GT team by putting them through an intensive training program after they posted a high-enough qualifying score in the game. Mardenborough ultimately became one of only 22 people to participate in the GT Academy-which ran from 2008 until 2016-to become a professional racer and at just 19 year old at the time of the competition, he was the youngest-ever winner in the program's history. . Going from being elite at a racing video game to becoming an actual successful professional race car driver is something that sounds like it could only happen in a movie (imagine if somebody went from being good at Madden or NBA2K to the NFL or NBA without any prior experience playing the sport) and no amount of fictionalizing or distorting the details of Mardenborough's jump from racing on a screen to racing on a track can take away from inherently remarkable his story is.

Further aiding the successful mythologizing of Mardenborough is Gran Turismo's strong execution of its conventional playbook. Archie Madekwe (Midsommar, Apple TV+'s See) makes Mardenborough the ideal underdog to root for by portraying him as a fiercely determined, endlessly likable guy who is hungry to make his dream of becoming a professional race come true despite the constant nagging from his parents (Djimon Honsou, Geri Halliwell-Horner) to pursue a more realistic career path. The initially frosty relationship that slowly becomes familial that Mardenborough develops with his chief engineer/trainer/mentor Jack Salter (David Harbour-whose in full wildly charismatic, scene-stealing character actor mode here) once Salter realizes Mardenborough is a naturally gifted racer gives the movie a sincere heart that elevates the stakes and makes the emotional beats pay off. And of course the racing scenes-outside of a few goofy-looking CGI shots that were used to help depict crashes-makes for an electrifying main event that throws the audience right into the center of the action with its visceral sound design and dynamic cinematography that cleverly stitches together drone shots, in-car closeups and medium shots from cameras placed on various parts of the track to cover nearly conceivable angle of a GT/F1 race. Whatever debts Gran Turismo owes movies like Rocky, Rudy or even Ford v. Ferrari never crossed my mind as I was too invested in these characters and what happened to them on-and-off-the track to break down its similarities to other sports films and for me at least, that's really all that matters. 

As the summer movie season winds down and a fall season filled with the high potential of more significant release date shifts on account of Hollywood's ongoing labor issues quickly approaches, Gran Turismo really is the perfect movie at the perfect time. It's a rousing piece of feel-good blockbuster entertainment that flies by and plays great with a crowd and it very well could be a bit before another movie like it arrives at the multiplex. If sports movies are your bag, Gran Turismo is well worth the trip to the theater to experience.                   

Grade: B