“I know this track. I’ve raced it a thousand times.” Words uttered by Jann Mardenborough – the central figure in this true story about a UK gamer who trades the virtual wheel of a racing car for a real one – that seem inadvertently fitting of a film like Gran Turismo, the latest from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp.
That’s because, despite boasting a synopsis revving with singularly cinematic lure, as well as the talents of Orlando Bloom and David Harbour in the pits, almost everything about this rags-to-riches story feels insipidly familiar. This isn’t to say Gran Turismo doesn’t occasionally aim for something resembling ingenuity. There is, it seems, a conscious effort to satisfy both fans of the original game series and the action movie crowd by incorporating much of the game’s visual style in the film’s more high-octane moments. The overall effect, however, is one of disappointing disjointedness.
Archie Uchena Madekwe plays Mardenborough: the Cardiff-based teenager thrust into the world of professional racing when, in 2011, he triumphed in an X-Factor style competition comprising the world’s greatest Gran Turismo players to earn a contract with team Nissan. His relative newcomer status makes Madekwe something of a shrewd casting choice, and the British actor brings heart and much-needed everyman likeability to the role. But they are qualities that only go so far in a narrative so derivatively wedded to the road well-driven.
Fist-pumping highs; dashboard-thumping lows; tough-love mentors; no-love enemies, fraught familial relationships, blossoming romantic ones – Gran Turismo goes through all the generic gears. But perhaps most frustrating of all is how the film often teeters on something altogether more meaningful. Early on, Mardenborough’s ex-footballing father (an underused Djimon Honsou), initially dismissive of Jann’s dreams, astutely highlights the socioeconomic factors perpetuating the inaccessibility of certain elite sport: “Do you know what racing cars cost? That is not our world, son.”
Meanwhile, the script, penned by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin, teases a more searing indictment of sport’s rapid commercialisation courtesy of Nissan’s brand-obsessed Marketing Exec. Danny Moore (Bloom straddling a fine line between pleasant and slimy). Any serious comment, however, takes a back seat once Mardenborough meets brilliant but disgruntled former driver Jack Salter (Harbour, whose brand of grumpy charm is a notable highlight), who takes him under his wing.
From there, Gran Turismo sticks to far more familiar terrain: a by-the-numbers underdog story that, skidding in on the pink coattails of a Barbie movie that some detractors saw as little more than a zany two-hour ad for a toy, feels like Sony speeding towards self-congratulation at every turn. In the end, Gran Turismo fails to swerve the same potholes that so often plague the biographical sports drama. It stalls when it really should soar.
Dir: Neill Blomkamp (12A, 135 mins)
Gran Turismo is in cinemas from Wed 9 Aug
words GEORGE NASH