Gran Turismo: a thoroughly entertaining but clichéd sporting underdog story

“This is not about selling toys,” pronounced Mattel bosses on the release of Barbie, the movie based on their corporation’s figurehead doll. A bizarrely disingenuous claim, it also belies the expectations of every other toy and video game company – see Hasbro’s Transformers film series or Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) – that’s moved to co-opt not just the retail tie-ins, but the actual production, of many recent blockbuster movies. Not that the makers of Star Wars figures or Disney animation plush toys haven’t been ambitiously cross-pollinating movies and merchandising for decades, but this is clearly a whole new level of potential brand control: cinema itself as plaything, or, at least, a full-length commercial for them.

They don’t all land, but Nintendo’s animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie is this year’s biggest movie so far, by far (followed by Barbie itself). Sony PlayStation Productions’ first attempt at a live-action film adaptation, 2022’s Uncharted, flopped. Undeterred, their best-selling racing game franchise Gran Turismo is next on cinematic pole position.

One says “game”, though, as various characters in the film boast, technically Gran Turismo is “the world’s most accurate racing simulator”, using the real cars, parts, tracks and the laws of physics of high-speed driving to test its players. And yes, Japanese car company Nissan subsequently founded the GT Academy programme, to take the simulator’s best racers from consoles to actual circuits. Presumably not a move approved for Street Fighter players.

But here’s where the film has its own cheat code, signposted in what the press notes appear to deem its official full title, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story. In fact, it’s a sporting underdog fable that has more in common with the story of Italian American boxer Rocky Balboa than Italian plumber Mario. As such, the video game, as it was for its real-life lead character Jann Mardenborough, is just the catalyst for chasing down a million-to-one-shot dream.

Viewed this way, the film’s real challenges are how it handles the genre’s numerous clichés: Archie Madekwe’s working-class Cardiff kid with talent and guilelessness to burn; David Harbour’s grouchy chief engineer battling his own demons, pushing his protégé to the limit; Orlando Bloom’s cheerleading Nissan exec, always with one eye on the money and the PR; the smug, rich kid professional rival, the loyal love interest, the dutiful parents and so on… Jann Mardenborough’s story may be unbelievable, but the movie’s character arcs and story beats can make it feel wearily familiar at times.

What keeps Gran Turismo on a thoroughly entertaining track are a couple of old-fashioned movie staples – good casting and assured, kinetic filmmaking. Harbour works wonders with his gruff mentor role, firing up exhausted old lines like “Get in the fight!”. Madekwe, though not perhaps the closest physical lookalike for Mardenborough, is an engaging blend of adolescent surliness and childlike vulnerability. Their double act – one revving himself up with Black Sabbath, the other chilling out pre-race to Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’ and Kenny G’s ‘Songbird’ – centres the plot’s dramatic traction and personal stakes.

Arguably even more crucial, in an age of fast and furious car movies with increasingly ludicrous CGI-usage, director Neill Blomkamp grounds his races in at least a recognisable version of reality and only then augments it. Alongside the driver cockpit POV and sweeping overhead drone shots familiar to Grand Prix viewers, the film employs specially mounted cameras inside the car chassis and an amped up editing style that then slows down to freeze key action or highlight special manoeuvres. Mardenborough himself does his own actual driving – hilariously, Madekwe hadn’t passed his test when shooting – and the resultant races are genuinely gripping.

It’s easy to be cynical about Gran Turismo, when it’s practically a feedback loop of self-promotion for PlayStation and Nissan from its title on down. It’s also naïve not to realise just how many rags-to-riches true stories have long been sucked into corporate promotion and profit, then repurposed for the screen by multinational conglomerates. Blomkamp’s film, for all its IP extension, or boilerplate narrative construction and shortcuts, still has a sense of personality working within the machine (“You take all that Kenny G anger, and you unleash it!” is one of the more memorable lines of the year), to deliver an authentic feelgood rush. With video games and movies now so inextricably intertwined, should, or can, one hope for more from this type of synergised mainstream entertainment? Or has the new formula won?

 ► Gran Turismo is in UK cinemas now.