Gran Turismo is Cool Runnings for the PlayStation generation

The sporting underdog movie is one of Hollywood’s proudest traditions, with the likes of Rocky, Cool Runnings, and The Karate Kid springing to mind, and Gran Turismo makes a spirited attempt to join the club. 

Based on the PlayStation series of racing games, Gran Turismo is somewhere between a 2-hour ad for the PlayStation brand and a classical rags-to-riches story.

The story of Jann Mardenborough is tailor-made for a Hollywood movie: a real-life gamer was so good at Gran Turismo that he became a real-life race car driver.

In real life, Mardenborough went from playing in his bedroom in Cardiff to racing at Le Mans, and the film does a decent job of tracking the most unlikely of sporting stories. 

Director Neill Blomkamp, who hasn’t lived up to the potential that District 9 suggested back in 2009, is a steady hand behind the camera, with his background in visual effects ensuring that the racing action is at least functional and clean, but the script does the majority of the heavy lifting.

Oscar-nominated screenwriters Jason Hall (American Sniper) and Zach Baylin (King Richard, Creed III) try their best to sell the audience on the idea of a gamer becoming a race car driver, and largely succeed.

The closest comparison to Gran Turismo is the 2005 football movie Goal, which was one parts marketing tool for Adidas and one part underdog sporting story, and Gran Turismo looks to do for video games what Goal did for football.

All the sporting movie tropes are there – the disapproving loved ones who tell the hero they will never make it, the hotshot rival, the initial loss that builds character – but the cast helps slightly lift it above cliché.

David Harbour is the standout performance as the gruff, disbelieving trainer who turned his back on the racing life but finds himself in charge of training a young up-and-comer.

Harbour’s shtick as the grumpy Jack Nicholson type works well here, with his performance invoking Dennis Hopper’s legendary turn in Hoosiers. 

Harbour’s skeptical turn as the trainer is a major part of the film working as well as it does, with Harbour essentially serving as the audience surrogate; his growing respect and admiration for the hero gamer mirrors the viewers’ own experience and it is a testament to Harbour he makes the character more interesting than is written on the page.

There are some stylistic flourishes where the lines between film and game blur that make you wish the film would fully commit to the idea of a gamer who sees the real race track as a game instead of one or two moments that exist to serve as mere marketing for the games.

Gran Turismo is a solid addition to the genre of movie you flick by on TV late one night or while in a hotel room, catch a random half-hour stretch of and come away with the conclusion that it’s basically alright.

It is an art form to make a movie that can be watched in chunks on television, films by Tony Scott or Michael Bay are some choice examples of the genre, and Gran Turismo does a solid job and is a welcome addition to the sporting movie canon.