Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) is a UK teen who's extremely good at the Playstation racing simulator Gran Turismo and not all that good at getting through to his father (Djimon Hounsou) that his pastime is just as much a real sport as soccer (which his father played at a professional level, with his older brother firmly on the same path). Sadly, professional racing is a rich man's game, and there's no career path from racing simulated cars to driving the real thing. Or is there?
Meanwhile in Japan, marketing guy Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) is pitching an crazy idea to his bosses at Nissan. Today's drivers don't care about cars, but Grand Turismo players do: what if they created a contest where the winner got to drive race cars for real, thus inspiring a generation of gamers to take their skills onto non-virtual roadways? Management says yes - so long as nobody dies.
To manage this, Moore turns to grumpy burnt out mechanic Jack Salter (David Harbour, who gives a performance way above and beyond what this kind of film requires), mostly because nobody else wants to be responsible for a bunch of gamers losing control of race cars at lethal speeds. His approach is to basically neg the drivers constantly, and rightly so. Oh wait, here comes Jann: could he possibly he the one to melt Salter's heart and make good on the track?
There aren't a lot of surprises here (being based on a true story obviously limits the possible twists), but the stakes are just low enough that the challenges have real dramatic tension. Jann obviously isn't going to win a big race first time out, but is he good enough to come fourth once in six races and earn his formal qualifications? Is his faltering media presence going to be so big a stumbling block (this is a marketing campaign after all) that Moore might cut him loose even if he's the best racer? Is he ruthless enough to survive in a world where fatal accidents are part of life?
Director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie) pulls out a bunch of camera tricks and a lot of game-style graphics to give the races that something extra. But fast cars going extremely fast is the real appeal here and he films the races with a punchy mix of hyperbole (camera zooming into engines, drone camera zooming across the track) and gritty realism that makes them thrilling viewing.
The off-track plot strands are less flashy but equally effective, stripping a collection of traditional subplots (the disapproving father, the cocky rival, the new girlfriend, the evil adversary, the disapproving mentor who has to be won over) down to their bare essentials and throwing them all into the mix.
Add in a range of winning performances - Bloom's marketing man is just sleazy enough to be convincing without being a bad guy, Harbour is deserving of his own spin-off where each movie he trains up a new batch of out-of-their-depth kids, and an always likable Madekwe is convincing as a slightly awkward teen whose only real drawback is his lack of confidence in himself - and you've got a rock-solid sports film that's a lot better than it should be.
Especially as it's basically a commercial for both the Playstation version of Gran Turismo and Nissan. If this leads Hollywood to decide the more brands your film features the better the film is, when we get a slasher movie that cross-promotes McDonalds, Black & Decker, Adidas, Patagonia and Kings Funerals we'll know who to blame.
- Anthony Morris
No comments:
Post a Comment