Sony Pictures
Gran Turismo gets its IP-friendly name from PlayStation’s popular driving simulator and its story from reality: namely, the tale of Jann Mardenborough, the son of a British football player who, at age 19, won a “GT Academy” television-show competition that allowed him to parlay his video game skills into an actual racing career. Mardenborough’s dreams came true in a way that normally only happens in the movies, which turns out to be ironic given that Neill Blomkamp’s Sony-produced film about his life doesn’t have a reliable gasket in its engine. Great racing sequences aside, it’s so clichéd and unadventurous that it makes its source material seem deep by comparison.
First, the pretty good news—whenever it hits the asphalt, Gran Turismo (in theaters August 11) vrooms about with sleek, muscular precision. Blomkamp duplicates the video game’s shiny aesthetics both in terms of environments (all sun-dappled, leaf-strewn, twisty-turny roadways) and super-charged rides, whose tires squeal, gears shift and motors hum with requisite power.
Save for bookending CGI shots in which its protagonist becomes virtually encased in a holographic vehicle (and/or has his nuts-and-bolts ride vanish in mirror-image fashion), the director’s automotive action feels real, and it’s embellished by just the right amount of freeze frames, slow-motion, and graphical flourishes (dotted-line course trajectories, pole position text displays). It’s not quite as ferocious as Ford v Ferrari but, in this specific regard, it gets the job done.