If this wasn't a true story, I wouldn't have believed its premise. For those who don't know, what happened was the best global GT sim racers were offered to compete against each other and become an actual professional race car driver in the circuit. Thankfully the movie adaptation has vast commentary on the safety concerns behind the competition with no need to get into the legalities and paperwork, and the movie has some of those concerns brought to life on screen. I will admit to not following up with the true story itself (largely because part of me doesn't want to know), but for a movie that wants to emulate the true story, it seems to have taken creative liberties when it wanted to and then missed out on opportunities to take more creative liberties where it could have.
Before I get into any of that, let me start off by saying that if in the audience's eyes a film is a win if it gets seemingly better as it progresses, then Gran Turismo did its job. Moments at the end were paid off by what was set up earlier on, scenes had the chance to breathe (including racing moments), and characters all came together when earlier on they spent most of the time apart from each other. I'll also say that I had trepidation entering this film because if they had decided to integrate a lot of the video game into this adaptation (which they did), I don't know how it would translate for audiences who don't know of or care about the game; I'm here to say that I think it does enough to let casual moviegoers to be subservient to its entertainment value while being aware of the virtual entertainment this thing is based around, so long as you are entertained by the story itself.
Gran Turismo does this cool thing where, when the character is playing the game early on, they sometimes use visual effects to simulate that of a real life driver (or kind of go into "replay mode" of the game when it can), and conversely in some of the real life driving/racing scenes, they use many of the game's audial/visual elements and sometimes make it a game-like experience. Whether it's the classical red-yellow-green start sounds, the racer's position showing above their car in the shot (sometimes in a freeze-frame, which I'll get to why they do that later), the race leaderboard and track layout interface you're familiar with from the game's HUD, the suggested driver lines including brake zones, and sometimes (albeit rarely) they show the follow cam that the game is known for having. Whenever there is a scene in a different part of the world, they show it in the same classic way as the game does with its font and its country's flag.
The only real nitpicks I have with that though is that they do frantic jumping around early on in the film like you see in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and literally every place that you go to there is some sort of indicator immediately thereafter that you're there anyway. This isn't verbatim, but for example if the movie transported us to Tokyo and the text reads TOKYO, JAPAN, ten seconds later a character will say: "Thanks for inviting me to Tokyo." I get you're following the game, but I say in that case do one or the other. They also had a non-racing moment where they use a video game-like cue (I do not know if this is a part of GT or not), and they had a golden opportunity to use it as a comedic punchline immediately after but never did, which is too bad. In all, I think they melded a lot of the video game in post-production moments and it should entice gamers without distracting too much from others who maybe haven't played the game.
There is an act of this movie focused on training the gamers to compete against one another which has shades of what Top Gun: Maverick delivered, but it only lives in its shadow. Yes, they make the audience aware of forces on the body, real life consequences versus simulation resets, and a few debriefs between sessions, but it doesn't evolve very well with a lot of training/racing coverage, and instead stays with quick-cut montages. I suppose if you know where the rest of the story goes and the film's actual runtime (which I didn't, another fault of this portion which TG:M is clear on), then maybe you'll be more accepting of this in the moment, but by me not being aware this is an instance where I would be forgiving if the movie was longer in favor of it. Instead, some of this runtime is spent developing some characters who you'll never see again later. One could argue this would have worked better as a limited series, but as a cinema aficionado I prefer its big-screen gamble. I just think there is more story to embellish on that had to be cut away.
And by the way, speaking of the training, I have a hard time believing that a game which makes 60% of its sales in international markets (and 25% in Asia) would only feature victors which are nearly all perfect English speakers or from the UK. Maybe that actually happened or maybe this is where they take their liberties, but I found that to be a bit far-fetched when this is a game source from Japan as I am willing to bet the majority of elite GT racers are Japanese. Maybe I am wrong. They also made a mistake in their competitive race giving all of the drivers the same car color; you can take creative liberties here, but the only way you know who our protagonist driver is is by them freeze-framing and pointing it out to us.
Also, Gran Turismo is known as "the real driving simulator," which is their excuse when we don't get things in the game such as damage modeling or overzealous senses of speed through depth of field or car engines as something like Forza Motorsport does. It is for the love of the cars. Yet, this film does not seem to do that as much. I suppose this is where I have a bit of a disconnect being a fan of the game, because the movie never gives those moments that the game (or this real life story) should best be known for. The movie makes a big stink about these gamers who have spent thousands of hours on certain tracks, yet they never key into discussion on their prowess of it, which would be really vindicating cinematic moments. Instead, the majority of their training is running, which I no doubt believe is something they have to do a lot of but we could be better educated on what they are doing to mentally improve as racers as well. These little details help better inform the audience, especially what it means to commit to a line, build draft behind another car (which they never do), and even when the movie points out the resentment that other professional racers had against gamers entering the circuit it doesn't become a bigger plot point or focus afterward. Our protagonist gets one moment to see some social media reels about commemorating him for entering professionally, but never ran into any of the blowback which would show some of the emotional struggle he has to go through. You also see weird inconsistencies like drivers depressing clutch pedals when they are paddle-shifting instead of using a gearbox.
As I said before, save the final race the shooting coverage is very quick and minimalized, and largely incoherent. It's a shame too, because this could have been a great 4DX/D-BOX experience overall but I don't know if it will fall to the fray of seats "moving because things are happening." For the action they have to tell more than show as a result, but it's hard to figure out this movie's pacing too because you don't know where it's leading to until it gets there. As far as you're concerned, the gamers are going to compete in a race together and it could imply that you'll see its winner race professionally. So that happens and they do, then you get into a professional race, and then afterward you're suddenly now informed that it's just race one of seven? Then even after that seventh race, it's revealed that there is another big-big race that would need loads of prep work beforehand? Maybe I want the story focus to be elsewhere, but these are the things that movies like Ford v Ferrari did so excellently in its storytelling (not to mention the way the races were shot and edited). Thankfully, that last act of the movie really did improve what was shown before, but the first 2/3 of the movie sometimes felt like 90-minute an AI-written trailer.
You'd think that a lot of what I said makes me come out of this movie with a negative experience, but that is not the case at all. In the end (no pun intended) it as a net-positive experience, but this is a movie that I see either could have been great or had a lot of missed opportunities despite its true story. Although I admittedly was okay on Chappie and never saw Elysium, based on critic and audience response alone, this will easily be Neill Blomkamp's best effort since District 9, a movie which I very much enjoy. David Harbour and Djimon Hounsou bring fun and powerful performances, respectively, and the racing shots all seem practical (with a lot of drone shots that can look video game-y which is cool), save one shot that required CGI and for good reason. The real person this story is based on even got to be a stunt-double for the actor portraying him, which was a nice touch. I think this movie ends up being a celebratory crowd experience which makes it worth seeing in theaters, and I think many people will have fun with where this movie goes overall. I just see a movie that will sometimes pale to other movies that compare to it especially when it is so close to them in narrative and release timing, but on its own merits it's absolutely a fun experience both for GT fans and casual moviegoers. If nothing else, it's absolutely a ringing endorsement for Gran Turismo as a video game and Sony as a corporation. I wish nothing but success for this film and maybe later I'll get to look up the passage of time for the actual true story.
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