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Sports movies have a tendency to follow the most basic formula when it comes to how a narrative script is supposed to be written. It’s not a knock on the genre, it’s just that the genre is one of the easiest to follow the three-act structure with because it will culminate in a physical conflict in the third act. Gran Turismo does not do anything to shake up the narrative structure of this type of movie (nor does it have to) and still delivers enough fun to make it a worthwhile trip to the theater.
Gran Turismo follows Jann (Archie Madekwe), an avid fan of the Gran Turismo video game and one of the best players in the world, as he wins a contest to join the GT Academy and become a racer in real life. With the help of a marketing executive from Nissan (Orlando Bloom) and his Chief Engineer Jack (David Harbour) Jann has to defy the odds and prove to the world that racers who start in the video game are just as valid as racers who start with real cars. Djimon Hounsou, Geri Halliwell, Maeve Courtier-Lilley, and Josha Stradowski also star.
Fundamentally, the movie works mostly because of how well the racing sequences are shot and showcased to the audience. Using the fact that Jann is a video game player as a lens really does help articulate to the audience what is going on, where Jann is in comparison to the rest of the racers, and how close he is to winning. On top of this, the closer and more intimate shots within the cockpit of his car make it easier to follow his emotions as a human and his thought process as he communicates with Jack through the car’s built-in communication systems.
The movie does have a bit of an issue when it comes to placing the more human moments into the narrative. It does start out slow because too much of the beginning of the film is devoted to how well things are not going for Jann and his relationship with his parents and brother which could have been cut down fairly easily considering it adds very little to the actual movie. The same goes for a sequence in Tokyo later on where Jann and his girlfriend Audrey go sightseeing which, considering how small her role is going forward, amounts to very little. The time spent there would have been better used either developing his rivalry with Team Capa (it feels more like a rivalry for Jack than Jann as the movie portrays it) or developing the rest of the team considering the third act is the 24-hour long race at Le Mains and they pull back two guys who were racing with him at the GT Academy without much development either during the academy or as they are going into this massive race with huge stakes.
All of that said, the sound mix and visuals in Gran Turismo are top-notch and make the movie worth seeing on a big premium screen. While the narrative may not be as tight as one would hope it would be, the movie is still a ton of fun and has some of the best racing action in a film over the last few years. If one is unfamiliar with the video game this movie is based on, the opening 10 to 15 minutes are basically an ad for it so they’ll be brought up to speed relatively quickly.
Final Rating: 8/10
Gran Turismo officially opens on August 24th, 2023, however select theaters are holding early screenings as Sony tries to generate hype for the movie because the writers and actors cannot do press due to the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes.
