Gran Turismo - Movie Review
0"Gran Turismo" (2023) directed by Neill Blomkamp is an emotional rollercoaster of a film which impacts you even greater since it's mostly based on a true story. I've never played a Gran Turismo game myself but I am very interested after seeing this film.
Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) has been in love with racing since he was a young child. He spends countless hours every day honing his skills in the Gran Turismo racing simulator game franchise against his father's wishes. Jann is given an opportunity of a lifetime when Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) & Jack Salter (David Harbour) scout out the world's greatest racing sim player to turn into a real life professional racer. The film is based on real events and it leads to a race at the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Gran Turismo was such an amazing experience. It contains an enriching, fascinating, scary story that is executed extremely well. The three lead actors perform admirably and really drive home and sell the whole experience. The actual racing scenes themselves are high octane and thrilling; as these racers are going over 300 miles per hour for several hours straight following a narrow track side by side competitive drivers with their own differing personalities and limits.
Now I have very little bad things to say about the film; ultimately I felt it was a fantastically entertaining and impactful experience that I highly recommend. My nitpicks begin with the virtue signaling historical inaccuracy of including female racers in the GT Academy which did not happen in real life until several years after the events of this film; so that was entirely fabricated for forced inclusivity. I was also slightly annoyed by the constant on screen annotated updates which felt the need to hold our hand throughout the entire race as if we aren't clever enough as viewers to understand whether he's performing well or not. The last nit pick is double edged because it was probably necessary; but there is an egregious amount of CGI which felt a bit overdone.
Gran Turismo is definitely one of the greatest racing movies of all time. However I liked "Ford v Ferrari" (2019) more than this and would recommend seeing it before this.
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