"Gran Turismo": review

Archie Madekwe as Jann Mardenborough

[WARNING: spoilers.]

Race movies usually stand or fall based on how well they balance personal drama with intense scenes of rolling metal on the tracks. "Ford v. Ferrari" and "Rush" stand front and center as examples of good movies in this genre. Movies based on games have a spottier track record. Among the better ones, the recent "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" comes to mind, as well as a video-game-adjacent film like "Wreck-It Ralph." Neill Blomkamp's 2023 "Gran Turismo" combines racing and gaming into what should, by rights, be a cringe-inducing story about a racing gamer who gets the chance to race real cars. Instead of being corny, "Gran Turismo" gives the audience a heartfelt story (apparently based on real events) about a kid with a gaming talent who gets recruited by Japanese car company Nissan to prove to the world that its possible to transition from "sim racing" to real racing. The film stars Archie Madekwe, David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Maeve Courtier-Lilley, Geri Halliwell Horner (yes—Ginger Spice), Djimon Hounsou and Josha Stradowski.

Jann Mardenborough (Madekwe) is a Sony PlayStation gamer (Sony product placement is all over this movie) with a love of Gran Turismo, a racing simulation that's considered one of the most realistically accurate in the business. Jann has a natural talent for the game, and he competes online regularly against other elite players. Jann doesn't realize that Nissan has cast a net, searching for sim racers from around the world who might be talented enough to try competing in real life. He unknowingly gains a chance to compete to be part of Team Nissan—a competition he wins. His father Steve (Hounsou), a blue-collar worker and former footballer, can't relate at all to his son's gaming, concentrating most of his energies on his other son Coby (Daniel Puig), who is on track for athletic stardom. Jann's not-quite-girlfriend Audrey (Courtier-Lilley) is more supportive, as is Jann's mother Lesley (Halliwell Horner).

When Jann arrives at the GT Academy to learn how to race in real cars, he is met by brightly optimistic—but somewhat smarmy—Danny Moore (Bloom), who does marketing for Nissan, and who has aggressively promoted the idea of sim racers getting into real cars. Whatever Moore's sunny disposition, he is counterbalanced by mechanic and chief trainer Jack Salter (Harbour), who is a former racer unconvinced that a bunch of bedroom-bound gamers can be turned into actual racers on a real track. 

Much of the movie is devoted to training and to the gradual elimination, one by one, of the candidates to be on Team Nissan. Jann barely wins the coveted position, but Danny, ever the marketing man, thinks the guy who got second place should be the front man for Team Nissan. Jack, who is slowly becoming a believer in Jann's abilities, shuts this down and insists that Jann be Team Nissan's representative. 

The next hurdle is for Jann to qualify for his license to compete internationally. He does this after several tries, and Team Nissan is his official sponsor. Jann's first major competition is in Germany, at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, a treacherous track. Jann does well for a while, but at a part of the track known as the Flugplatz (airfield), his car gains air and goes flying, smacking into some stands and killing a spectator. After the tragedy, a guilt-ridden Jann wants to retreat from racing, but mentor Jack, now a second father figure, is relentless about getting his protégé back behind the wheel and conquering fear. Jack tells his own personal story about dropping out of racing after being involved in a deadly wreck when he raced at Le Mans. Having become a believer in Jann's talents, Jack tells Jann that he thinks Jann can succeed where Jack had failed. This leads us to the movie's conclusion: a 2013 race at Le Mans. This is a 24-hour race usually done with teams of three drivers, with each driver on the road three hours at a time (this obviously means that not all of the drivers will drive for 8 hours each, but driving times can vary if there are emergencies). The Le Mans competition is as much a mind game as a physical race, and Nissan brings back some of Jann's former competitors from the GT Academy to fill out the rest of the team. Jann's goal, in this race, isn't so much to win as it is to place, i.e., to end up as one of the top-three teams.

Gran Turismo has more heart than you'd expect it to have. It gives us a good, clear picture of the family dynamic in Jann's home, located in Cardiff, Wales. We get a real sense of the father-son tension, which evolves into something better as Steve, too, becomes a believer in his son's talents. Archie Madekwe, as Jann, is a natural in the role, perfectly conveying what it's like to be a sullen, misunderstood teen who has a particular gift but isn't ready for all the media attention. David Harbour is great as the gruff pessimist Jack, who slowly transforms into an optimist as he watches Jann bravely tackle challenge after challenge. It was also something of a revelation that Geri Halliwell Horner can really act, although her role as Mum is rather limited. Orlando Bloom, as Nissan marketer Danny Moore, comes off as smarmy and a bit too PR and money-oriented, but ultimately, he's not the film's bad guy. The closest we get to a true antagonist is Nicholas Capa (Stradowski), a temperamental racer who's not above cheating, and who thinks bringing sim drivers into real-world racing is a joke. I thought the concept was ludicrous myself, but the film is based on a true story, and while it may play fast and loose with the details, the story in its grandest sense did, in fact happen: Jann Mardenborough is a real person, and he really did win third place at the 2013 Le Mans competition. At the same time, though, the movie did remind me of a 1984 film called "The Last Starfighter," in which aliens seed Earth with a particular arcade game to find a potential star pilot to recruit for an interstellar war. A kid named Alex Rogan beats the game and is visited by an alien who wants him to go from simulated fighting to real fighting in their war. The premise of "The Last Starfighter" was never far from my mind as I watched "Gran Turismo." (And I admit I did keep wanting to say "Gran Torino"* in my head.)

The racing cinematography is quite good, though perhaps not as thrilling as the cinematography in "Ford v. Ferrari." There are some computer-generated moments that are supposed to put you in the mindset of a sim driver-turned-real racer. These graphics are few and far between, and they don't get in the way of the main story. I was worried, at some points, that the story might be trying to say that Jann saw real-life racing as merely a more intense simulation, but the movie thankfully never went in that direction: the boy took reality seriously. All in all, this was a good, solid story in the tradition of movies like "Rocky" and "The Karate Kid," i.e., it was saddled with a fairly predictable plot, outcome, and cliché tropes like the grizzled, hard-bitten teacher. Despite all that, the story was heartwarming all the same. You'll find yourself rooting for Jann, our plucky hero, and the movie ends with pictures of the real Jann, his parents, and all of the other people who contributed to Jann's success. "Gran Turismo" bucks the trend of lame, video-game-based films like "Doom" or "Resident Evil" or "Mortal Kombat," delivering surprisingly classic, good old-fashioned entertainment.

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*"Gran Torino" is another movie I somehow failed to review. I'll put that in the queue for a rewatching, just like "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."