Based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), the film is the ultimate wish fulfillment tale of a teenage Gran Turismo player whose gaming skills won a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional race car driver. What he must learn from trainer, ex-race car driver Jack Salter (David Harbour) and realize is that playing a Gran Turismo game, no matter how sophistical the game is, is definitely not like driving a formula race car at upwards to 360mph. Marketer, Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) is the one that talked Nissan into conducting this Gran Turismo academy in order to find out which player is going to be the best, so he has everything on the line to ensure this works. This is the quintessential underdog film, and who doesn't like an underdog film?
Others to round out the cast are Darren Barnet as Matty Davis, Djimon Hounsou as Steve Mardenborough, Jann's father, Takehiro Hira as Kazunori Yamauchi, Geri Halliwell Horner as Lesley Mardenborough, Jann's mother, Josha Stradowski as Nicholas Capa, Daniel Puig as Colby Mardenborough, Jann's brother and Maeve Courtier-Lilley as Audrey.
This was delineated with such precision by director Neill Blomkamp ("District 9" '09, "Elysium" '13, "Chappie" '15, "Demonic" '21) plus TV, videos, music videos and many shorts. I believe that Blomkamp chooses his films with care since they are seemingly helmed with amazing emotion, staging and pacing. So, he doesn't have a tremendous amount of feature films under his belt, but couple that with all the shorts he has been involved with, and you have a great amount of talent. It was equally well penned by writers Jason Hall ("Spread" '09, "Paranoia" '13, "American Sniper" '14, "Thank You for Your Service" '17) and Zach Baylin ("King Richard" '21, "Creed III" '23), based on a story by Jason Hall and Alex Tse. The continuity, cohesiveness and conciseness in this script was truly formulated well from this kid's blue-collar background to becoming the racer he has become which is all he really wanted ever since he was 5 years old. Really, other than maybe one small area of slowness and the fact that for not having much money, this teen had an impressive setup in his bedroom, which begs the question, where did he get the money?, this was spot on. Apparently, it must've taken time to acquire this kind of setup--can you say working yourself to the bone? As with most racing films, the photography, visuals and locales were amazing.
If you are a racing aficionado, you'll love this film, but even if not, like I mentioned prior, this is an amazing underdog film which you will want to get on your feet a cheer this guy on. If you want to see this up, close and personal, it's also being presented in both IMAX and 4DX formats. Have fun with this, I know I did!
Out of 4 Stars: 3.5 Rated: PG-13 135mins.
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