So the year is 1998. It’s my senior year of High School, and it’s a few weeks away from graduation, and everyone had full-on senioritis at school. One day, we had the PlayStation in a classroom, and one of my closest friends brought in this new game that just came out. It was a racing game, the double disc-styled jewel case with a car with a cover over it, and the title was something I had never heard of before – Gran Turismo. The game loaded up, and what I saw something I’d never seen before in a racing game; it was nothing like a Daytona USA (DAAAAYYYYYYTOOONNNAAAAAH) or Ridge Racer, a racing game synonymous with PlayStation. It wasn’t even like Need For Speed, which had this arcade-style racing with real cars. This game had real cars, and the attractive screen-like opening of the game with these camera angles that you usually see in films and some very high-end races on TV let you know from the first moment that this was a different type of racing game. The cars were real, and they looked super real by 1998 32Bit video game standards. But the game was challenging; you couldn’t just hold on to the gas and then brake a little bit to play – this game focused on realism, and you had to know real driving principles to play it. Between the huge instruction manual that was a basic driving manual and the fact that this was the first game to use the original Dual Shock controller to simulate the feel of the engine and road as you played, there was nothing like it. From there, like many, I was hooked on this “Real Driving Simulator,” as it was called, took things to a new level and made you feel that you could, if you got really good, drive a high-end car on a race track and do well. Well, at least when you’re young, and that’s all you’re doing each day.
See Gran Turismo is a sports movie; it’s a biopic about a young man who had that dream and fulfilled it. Archie Madekwe plays Jann Mardenborough, a young college-aged man who spends most of his time playing Gran Turismo and going to his job that he doesn’t like. His father, Steve (Djimon Hounsou), thinks playing this game is a waste of time and that Jann needs to go back to school while he’s also focusing on his brother Coby’s (Daniel Puig) football (soccer) games. Jann doesn’t feel supported by his family in his dream to become a race car driver. Things changed when a Nissan marketing executive named Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) conceived an idea to have a contest where they take the best Gran Turismo players around the world compete to go to a training camp to be trained to be actual race car drivers on the Nissan racing team. Jann qualifies and then starts his journey to fulfill his dream.
From here, it’s just standard sports film stuff: underdogs overcoming the odds, hard trainers that mean the best for their protegé, good rivals that become friends, and bad rival that you root against. It’s a feel-good movie 101 with some fantastic direction and a connection to a popular and beloved video game. I can’t forget to talk about David Harbour as Jack Salter, the race car driver trainer who doesn’t believe that kids who play video games can be race car drivers. Of course, his mind is changed, but he brings so much to the role that he’s fun to watch and brings the right amount of gravitas as the film’s mentor. I don’t watch Stranger Things, so I don’t have a lot of history with him as an actor, but I was legitimately impressed. Neill Blomkamp of District 9 fame is the director of this film, which was a surprise to many because this isn’t some science fiction parable but essentially something light and hopeful. While the story is pretty standard, he does bring so much to the camera work and shots of the races. The sweeping camera movements using drone cameras are excellent and bring some of the energy that gamers would know from the replays but also something completely new from his point of view. Blomkamp keeps the people parts interesting, making you feel the drama of each scene and the stakes as Jann tries to become a race car driver. Yet, the film sings as he does things where the imagination of Jann would wrap his gaming chair with the parts of a car around it or when he’s in a car how he can visually show him remembering him playing the game in his room with the cars coming apart or coming together piece by piece. The little sounds from the game and HUD graphics sprinkled throughout are just the right amount of easter eggs in this film to put it at just the right spot. I enjoyed Gran Turismo a lot, and it was great to see this real person’s story brought to life; it tells people you can achieve your dreams, even if it’s from playing video games. PlayStation Studios is on a pretty good run with this, The Last of Us being very great and Twisted Metal being okay enough. Gran Turismo made me remember just how fun it is to play the game and made me turn it on when I got home, dreaming of being a race car driver again.
Score: B+
