Patron Pick – Gran Turismo

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Gran Turismo (2023)
Written by Jason Hall, Alex Tse, and Zach Baylin
Directed by Neill Blomkamp

2023 feels like an apocalyptic year for Hollywood. The labor strikes, which the studio execs refuse to approach in good faith, stretch into the future. Rumblings of AI-generated films & television abound. The content coming out often feels like it was already written by AI anyway. The mainstream has never been such a void of humanity, and that’s saying a lot. The brand movie and video game adaptations have been hot commodities as trends shift in a disturbing direction. These two horrible new late-stage capitalism genres come together in the mire that is Gran Turismo. “Based on a true story” but clearly embellished and overly dramatized, which doesn’t help the picture to become more compelling. Not since Black Adam have I felt such a sinking sense of doom watching a movie that this medium I love so much is being strangled in the States, everything that made it worth engaging with melting away (thank god for world cinema!).

Desperate Nissan marketing executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) makes a pitch to establish a GT Academy where players of Sony’s popular racing sim Gran Turismo can be transformed into real racing drivers. His pitch starts by discussing how people have lost their passion for cars. No kids dream of being a race car driver anymore, and people don’t drive as much. So, this film has to be taking place in a parallel universe because the last time I checked, people are driving cars in such numbers that it is one of (not the only) causes of the climate collapse that seems as if it will wipe out all life on the planet. But no, Danny thinks we’ve forgotten about the ol’ auto-mo-beel. 

For Nissan and Sony to agree to this venture, they want a trusted driving expert to vet the candidates. Danny finds that in Jack Slater (David Harbour), a driver-turned-mechanic who remains very skeptical of these gamers. But lo’ a chosen one shall emerge from the controller-wielding flock, one gamer to rule them all. This comes in the form of Jann (Archie Madekwe), a retail worker who lives at home and can imagine himself going from his bedroom PC to the seat of a real car, racing in Le Mans. Tournaments are held to see who qualifies for the GT Academy, and Jann makes it. Now the hard part begins, proving himself and, you know, not dying in a flaming crumpled ball of metal on the track.

There is literally zero reason this movie should pass the two-hour mark. There is nothing in this film that warrants that much runtime. You feel it stretch on, like an astronaut being spaghettified on the event horizon of a black hole, stretched to the fullest capacity and leading to a snap. That snap was me. My brain zoned out during the endless racing sequences, making me go to the mat with drowsiness. No, I will watch this movie so I can review it, damn you consciousness being reasonably bored with soulless cloying nothing. 

I don’t know if you’ll believe me when I spoil this movie, but Jann overcomes his fears, wins the race, beats all the bad guys, and proves gamers are real sportspeople, too, don’t ya know!? The opening of this movie is a five-minute commercial for the game followed by a 2 hour and 10-minute even worse commercial for the game. If buying Gran Turismo the game meant the movie would officially end after those first five, I would have bought the fucking game. I don’t even own a PlayStation. Much like a video game, everything in this movie is obvious and pointed out to you before it happens. You will never be surprised or emotionally moved by anything that happens. You will sink into the warm, comforting amniotic fluid of 21st-century American cinema, feeling nothing & learning nothing, simply numbing your mind with visual morphine.

My one ask when you make a racing movie, and I don’t think this is too big of a stretch, is MAKE THE RACES FUCKING INTERESTING & ENTERTAINING TO WATCH! If you have ever played around with creative writing in ChatGPT, you have run into the “happy ending” problem. AI writing will not let genuine conflict or downbeat endings exist. I can see filtering out the ability to create hate speech, but good storytelling does depend on conflict. That’s what the Gran Turismo film feels like. Even the tropes you might expect of who will be an obstacle to Jann’s rise through the ranks don’t even come to fruition. The most we have is Jann experiences guilt because another racer crashes, burns, and dies during a race. But around 20 minutes later, he’s fine, and we move on. 

The filmmakers feel afraid to adopt any consistent visual gimmicks, either. In the beginning, as Jann plays in his bedroom, we get a 360 view as the car’s parts emerge from his imagination and take shape around him. Then the movie forgets it did this for around an hour, does it again in reverse, and then forgets it again. We see the track guidelines from the game through Jann’s mind at one point. Then that never happens again. One of the core points the movie claims it is trying to make is that gamers like Jann see racing differently than traditional drivers. The film doesn’t prove this, but it stumbles in making attempts to, only to seemingly become embarrassed by itself and stop, I guess?

I don’t know how to fully communicate how little tension there is in this picture, like zero. Is Jann ever genuinely worried he will die in a race? Not really. Does Jack ever push back firmly against gamers being drivers? For about 10 minutes. Does Danny, as an executive, ever become a hindrance? Nope. They introduce a rival race at one point. Surely, he creates a conflict of some sort? You would think, but no. Maybe Jann’s girlfriend worries about him dying in a race and wants him to stop? Nah, she’s pretty cool with it all. As I said above, this movie does not attempt to tell an interesting story. It instead assuages the egos of little gamer boys who are insecure about their hobby. Play video games. No one cares. 

Biggest deduction for this movie: The top 10 gamers in the world are not going to look like camera-ready models, I’m sorry. That was the funniest part of the picture. One day, realistic humans will be allowed to appear in Hollywood-produced films, but this wasn’t that day. Few films are as crass & nakedly commercialistic as this one. Neill Blomkamp really had us thinking he would ever make another movie worth a damn after District 9, didn’t he?

If you like this movie, came across this review, and feel like responding in the comments that I’m an idiot, I want to let you know you could not choose a greater waste of your time than that. Most likely I will just not approve your comment and delete. Worst case for you, I choose to engage. Gran Turismo is bad. That is objective. There’s zero debate to be had.