Review: ‘Gran Turismo’ is an Unexpected Burst of Adrenaline
Neill Blomkamp’s film proves itself to be a major cinematic underdog
In my recent review of Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 action/sci-fi film Elysium, I found myself conflicted about the director. He can be narratively clumsy, stylistically overwhelming and sloppy, but he also has moments where his narrative and formal ideas do align and create something special. Elysium landed in the same camp as District 9 for me — both films are alright, but there are too many of those clumsy moments and not enough of the great ones.
I was hesitant to see his odd Gran Turismo film for a number of the reasons. The most obvious is the strangeness of the film’s origin — it is both credited as an adaptation of the PlayStation video game series of the same name (the film was also produced by PlayStation, and being a Sony product is rife with product placement to serve themselves) and as an adaptation of the true story of its protagonist Jann Mardenborough (played in the film by Archie Madekwe). Obviously, it’s strange to credit a film as both an adaptation of a fictional product, especially a sports simulating video game, and as a true story simultaneously.
The truth is that the film is… kind of… both. I place emphasis on the ‘kind of’ of that statement. First and foremost…
