Gran Turismo

Grade: B-

In sports movies, it all seems to come down to the last point in the last second of the last quarter. Just once, can’t a team run away with it early, and the rest of the game be pretty much coasting? Gran Turismo is no different. It’s about race cars, and somebody wins by a thousandth of a second in the big climax. It won’t be anybody’s first rodeo when it comes to a biopic, but the true story it’s based on is unique enough.

Jann Mardenborough is an obsessive PlayStation race car gamer who rose to fame by doing the thing in real life. He became an actual racer for the Nissan team, handpicked by marketing man Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), and trained by tough love coach Jack Salter (David Harbour). His parents don’t believe there’s a professional future for him here. Montages show us how rigorous the training is. Director Neill Blomkamp can stage an exciting race. I’ll give him that. 

I enjoy David Harbour more and more each time I see him. He might be my favorite actor who doesn’t act. He puts on more of a presence than a performance. I don’t see him being nominated for any Oscars, but he brings a down-to-earth sincerity with his delivery in every role he plays. It might not be the right fit for every character he does, but here, it’s absolutely perfect. Orlando Bloom is appropriately charming, while mostly successfully hiding how slimy he is. When someone gets seriously injured, “how is this going to look for the company” is what he seems to care about the most – and he has to try to conceal that. As Jann’s father, it’s nice to see Djimon Hounsou again. His third-act tearful “I should have believed in you more” monologue is predictable and not the best-written one in the world, on paper – but he brings as much texture to it as possible, on the screen. Geri Horner, known in the 1990s as Ginger Spice, proves to be a fine actor as Jann’s mother. And carrying everything is appealing 28-year-old Archie Madekwe (Beau Is Afraid, Midsommar) as Jann.

Gran Turismo doesn’t break any new ground, but there’s some loud, masculine fun to be had here. I wanted more captions at the end to tell us what happened to some of the characters other than Jann. A downside to a movie like this is people become indistinguishable once you get them in a helmet, and in a suit, and in a car/jet/whatever. It gets tricky to keep track of which one is “our” character, and there’s only so much yelling into a headset from the sidelines that I can tolerate. 

Grade: B-