The video game genre hasn’t had a better year than this one with the HBO series The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros Movie out. So Gran Tourismo has a lot to live up to. That being said, Neil Blomkamp needs a win on his resume as well. His last film didn’t even come out in theaters. Sometimes Hollywood does give its actors and directors a second or third chance though. This might be the right combination for fans of the game and the director.

Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) is your average teenager. He likes to play video games, specifically the Gran Tourismo simulator,  and he has issues with his parents, mainly his father played by Jimon Hounsou, who wants him to be a Futbol player like he was when he was younger. The problem is his son isn’t interested in futbol.  At least the one in question isn’t.  When an opportunity to play in a tournament to become an actual race car driver comes up he takes it and wins his virtual race. Then goes on to an Academy to race against other winners of their respective races.

A surprise to me at the beginning of the film is there was a disclaimer saying this was based on a true story. I didn’t expect that. There was something about this story that made me scratch my head. I knew this name and when I saw one particular moment that was very memorable to me because I saw it on ESPN Sportscenter. And then I remembered who this man was. Spoiler Alert this is a real raceway driver who learned how to race cars by playing a simulator.  And he’s not the only one.

Video game movies aren’t my usual thing but I give every film a chance. And once I got into this story I started to notice other things I liked about it. Neil Blomkamp has a distinctive style that looks nothing like any other director’s films. He has a way with the camera that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. He puts the camera so close to the action. It’s like the viewer is actually driving the cars and shifting and breaking as well. I had never seen anything like this before. 

Also, the sound mixing and editing are both incredible as well. I felt the sound of the race cars in my seat. It was very loud in that theater. The editing was on point because the film would go back and forth between multiple drivers and people watching the races in the pits or the crowd. All the races felt very real and immersive. Add in the CGI which showed the main driver in the cockpit of his car all the while he was in his bedroom playing the game and the opposite as well. This movie played around with all kinds of tricks to make the viewer feel like they were a part of these races.

Along with all the technical acumen, there were actors who had to give performances in the film. The main characters were all fine but they didn’t blow me away with their performances. A couple of characters I haven’t mentioned yet are the man who brought this whole thing together and that was Orlando Bloom of The Lord of the Rings Franchise. He played the creator of the contest and convinced Nissan and GT to go along with his idea to combine these two things. He recruited Jack Salter as his instructor to help teach these contest winners how to actually drive real cars. David Harbour of Stranger Things fame plays that character. He feels like the only one who gives a realistic performance in this film. The others, including the main actor, seem a bit cartoonish to me.

I’ve been a fan of race car driving for decades now. I have literally lived 25 minutes from The Daytona International Speedway for most of my life. Through osmosis, I have followed Nascar and various other forms of racing. Jeff Gordon was my favorite driver before he retired. So I know enough about race car driving. This movie along with Rush I’d say has some of the most realistic racing and in-car sequences, I’ve ever seen. I mean I felt like I was in these cars going around these tracks. It’s that realistic to me. Neil Blomkamp did an incredible job making me feel this way.

That being said I felt the story was rushed, no pun intended, and the dialogue was quite clunky at times. A lot of the actors felt wooden in their performances including Bloom and the lead. A lot of these actors were relatively new to me and maybe this was because of that reason. The film and technical aspects hid the bad acting and story for the most part though. There is a reason to see this film and it’s not the acting. It’s the techniques Blomkamp used in making it look so realistic and immersive. This is a good movie in the end and fans of the game and racing in general will surely like it. 

3 ½ stars

Dan Skop Allen