Review of Gran Turismo, directed by Neill Blomkamp

I have a confession to make: when I first saw that Gran Turismo was a thing, and I was getting the trailers every time I showed up to my local AMC to see a movie, I had no interest in seeing the movie. I’m definitely not into racing or video games, which is what the crux of the movie is to propel the plot further.

That said, I skipped out when I had the chance to see the film in theaters when it was making its rounds. I had no regrets skipping this one, and then one day, many months later, I saw it was on Netflix. I still didn’t regret it then, either, but then I saw Saltburn.

Why does Saltburn connect to this? The guy who plays Farleigh in that movie is the main character in this movie: Archie Madekwe. I absolutely loved his performance in Saltburn, so when I made that connection, and realized the guy who was also in XO, Kitty is briefly in this, I decided to press play.

And while I did not love this movie at all, I didn’t hate it either. Here’s my review.

Dedicated gamer Jann finds himself in the opportunity to actually sit behind the wheel at races.

At the beginning of this movie, something big is established: a marketing executive pitches to Nissan that they need to take the most talented video game players, who specifically play Gran Turismo, a racing simulation, from all over the world and bring them to the GT Academy. There, they will compete to become the next professional racer.

The executive, Danny, decides to recruit a former driver named Jack to help train the kids, and although Jack has major reservations about all of this, he agrees to it anyways. We then pivot to meet Jann, who lives in Wales and loves the game. He wants to become a driver one day, but his father would never let him do that.

Jann finds out he is eligible for the race to join the academy due to his scores, and, after running from the cops with his brother, Jann is punished the morning of the race. He still leaves early to take the race, and wins, putting him in the GT Academy. He packs his bags and heads off, where he meets the other competitors.

However, Jann doesn’t do well in the beginning at all. They’re looking for someone charismatic, and Jann stumbles in front of the cameras and has terrible answers. The competition starts to whittle down, but Jann has an accident where he realizes the brakes weren’t working. No one believes him, but then they’re shocked to discover he knows what he’s talking about, as he was right.

The final race begins, and Jann wins against the favorite Matty. Although Danny wants Matty to be the one to be in front of the cameras and wheel, Jack fights for Jann to get the slot. The next challenge is this: Jann needs to finish in the top four of the next qualifying races, with the pros, in order to get his license and a Nissan contract.

His first race is in Austria, and he doesn’t do well. He gets better with each race, but fails to get into the top four. However, during his very last race in the UAE, Jann gets the fourth place win and is given his license. In Tokyo, he signs his contract and brings the girl he was talking to from the beginning of the movie, and the two start dating.

But during his next race, Jann gets into a big accident, and lands in the hospital. Someone was killed from his accident, as he landed in the crowd area, and Jann finds himself haunted by what happened. Jack has a moment with him, where he tells Jann about how he, too, killed someone—another driver—and he ended up retiring from the trauma.

Jann isn’t found guilty, but the backlash against him is still there. The next big race is a team one, and Danny brings back two of the GT Academy participants, Matty and Antonio, to race. The three of them keep going, and despite Jann’s anxiety throughout his drive time, as well as some mechanical errors, he ends up putting them on the podium at third place.

The epilogue then tells of Jann went on to keep racing, and was even in the film.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned before, I found this to just be an okay movie. If you’re super into the subject matter and the person it’s about, I think you would like this more than I did, but I think I realized why I wasn’t interested it in the first place.

I often feel similarly about sports movies, but this film especially is an underdog story. It feels generic in that way, and while Archie does a good job with the character and conveying his feelings about everything going on, I just couldn’t connect with the through line bringing all of the film together.

All of this is to say it simply wasn’t my cup of tea. If it was yours, great! Neither of us are wrong, taste is so subjective. I’m glad if you enjoyed it, but I found the premise to be kind of boring, and since I wasn’t into cars, that elements didn’t draw me in.

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