GRAN TURISMO
Two months ago, after being invited to see
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the local theater with my grandmother, I made a solemn vow to myself: That I would watch one movie in a theater per week. See, for years my theater-going habits had dwindled to almost nothing, seeing as I was far more preoccupied with collecting older movies on Blu-ray and 4K. Plus, I was going through a rather lengthy period of not-quite-snobbish disillusionment about the current state of cinema, something I imagine older people such as myself who find themselves closing in on the half-century mark often go through. But since the price of a ticket on Tuesdays is a mere $7.62, I figured I was out of excuses. (So I guess my viewing of episodes of the
FBI shows is going to be rather sporadic in the future - that is, assuming they continue to air on Tuesdays. Plus, nowadays we have
DreamLounger Reclining Seating!! 
) So after
Indiana Jones, week by week, I then went to...
Asteroid City...
Oppenheimer...
Barbie...
Talk to Me...
Lynch/Oz (a documentary)...
The Last Voyage of the Demeter...
And now
Gran Turismo! Full disclosure: This is what I would refer to as a
B.T.P. (Blind Ticket Purchase). I only saw this because it was a Tuesday and there was literally nothing else I particularly wanted to see. Honestly, I've never really been into race car driving or even computer gaming. Like many young kids in the early '80s,
did go to places like Aladdin's Castle or Chuck E. Cheese and did enjoy playing many old-school arcade games - y'know,
Pac-Man,
Galaga,
Q*bert,
Crystal Castles,
Centipede, stuff like that - but I'd never even been all that good at it. (Egads, I feel old sometimes!
) I've certainly got nothing
against professional race car driving or computer gaming, it's just not my thing. So, not really knowing
anything whatsoever about
Gran Turismo, beyond a vague mention seen someplace to the effect that it was doing pretty good at the box office, I went in a completely blank slate, hoping for my senses and gray matter to be sufficiently engaged.
You know, sometimes low expectations can be a
good thing...
Anyway, this movie is the true story of Jann Mardenborough (well-played by the very talented Archie Madekwe), a young man from Wales with mad gaming skills who gets recruited into the Nissan GT Academy in order to compete with other young hopefuls, with the prize being the possibility of competing as a professional race car driver. (BTW, does this idea remind anybody else of 1984's
The Last Starfighter?
) As the movie progressed, I became very much aware that it was rather closely following the post-
Rocky underdog sports genre story structure. We follow a young person from a humble background as he is plucked from obscurity to be given a chance to follow his dream, become a contender, go the distance, etcetera, etcetera. And we get the inevitable conflicts internal and external, as our protagonist must deal with the scoffers and skeptics and those who would crush him before he even gets to the starting gate, as well as his own inner doubts and fears and bewildered sense of
"Do I even belong in this picture?" And there is also the character of the crusty old trainer, in this case former pro driver-turned-mechanic Jack Salter (played by David Harbour), who starts out not believing that these nerdy gamer kids could
ever develop the athleticism and physical skills required to compete in the real world, and little by little becomes the young man's friend and champion. We even have ourselves a
super-nemesis, in this case arrogant hot-shot professional Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski), who is there at every turn to undermine and take down the young upstart any underhanded way he can (and although the film has a couple of tense confrontations on and off the track, it's rather mercifully sparing with the
"I'm gonna bust you up!" melodramatics). And inevitably, we get a lot of training montages.
So... story-wise we're in kind of familiar territory, right? Throughout most of the movie, I was able to more or less anticipate what the next plot development was going to be, and more often than not I was right. But you know something? That didn't bother me. I found myself caught up in the story
regardless of its familiarity. I found myself enjoying the movie greatly, even though I didn't feel like I was experiencing anything really novel.
And then...
it happened. And without giving spoilers, by
it I mean the
"freak accident"!
This was the point where I realized that the stakes had been raised. That this
wasn't just another in a long line of underdog sports dramas that have come along
at least since
Rocky. This was something real, something that had real-world consequences. And we
are brutally reminded, once again, that this was based on a true story.
Throughout most of the movie, we have a sense of inevitability, of "onward and upward" as our man Jann wins the competition against other gamers at GT Academy and then goes on to compete in Spain and Dubai, after which he earns his professional racing license and then moves on to compete in Tokyo. One thing the movie gets absolutely right is that although Jann makes great progress very fast, he also experiences great setbacks and defeats. But you have a sense that these are the inevitable bumps and bruises and growing pains that one goes though in this sort of competition, and it more or less feels authentic. Like I said, the story archetype is
very familiar, but watching one feels grateful that his progress is a
messy one.
And then... we get to the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany, and we're completely blindsided when... y'know,
it... happens. All I will say is that although there is no
permanent physical damage resulting from the incident, there
are tragic results and this is definitely a make-or-break moment. Does our man Jann allow the horror of this to define him? Or does he pick himself up and move on? By the time the credits rolled at movie's end, I felt like that the whole genre had been kicked up a notch, that this
wasn't just another story in the
Rocky mould. I felt like this could possibly
be the new
Rocky for a whole new generation of filmgoers!
So as you can gather... I really,
really liked
Gran Turismo!
Perhaps you'll find my response to the film just a
tad hyperbolic. I dunno, maybe it is! And like I said earlier, I had absolutely
no expectations going in, and when that happens you
can always end up easily impressed. But I really
do feel like it's a superior movie, and that it's worthy of whatever kudos get thrown its way. Not being familiar with the work of director Neill Blomkamp - beyond the fact that his previous films have been mostly sci-fi - I was blown away by what he did here. All the cast does exemplary work here, in particular the aforementioned Archie Madekwe as Jann. Orlando Bloom - a bit older and portlier than when he played Legolas in
The Lord of the Rings! - plays Danny Bloom, the marketing executive with a crazy dream. His character has moments of being less than sympathetic, especially at a point where it's unclear as to whether or not Jann has actually won the academy competition, but Bloom always plays him as real, never as villainous
or indeed purely virtuous. And the aforementioned David Harbour is magnificent and affecting as the trainer Jack Salter, a man who at one point could have been a racing contender himself and had been derailed by his own tragic accident.
I would also be remiss if I did not mention the brilliant Djimon Hounsou as Jann's father. Their relationship is an extremely affecting one, the father starting out as being a pragmatist and a realist who wants his son to be practical and put the computer games away and
do something with his life, as one imagines
all good fathers do. When
it happens at Nürburgring Nordschleife, and Jann's mother and father - the former played by former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell - are watching on TV at home, it's a brutal moment where they are absolutely fearing the worst and not even knowing whether their son is even alive or dead. Eventually there is a joyously tearful reunion and reconciliation between father and son later on, and it is decidedly
not sentimental or sappy. Like everything else about this movie, it feels
real. You know, much of what we consider clichéd or overly familiar only
seems that way because they're rooted in greater truths. Such is the case with this movie.
There are also some great visual FX, incorporated into the movie in such a way as to give a kind of metamorphosis of perspective as Jann in a game simulation imagines himself actually driving, and also vice versa later in the film. These sequences feel completely organic and almost never gratuitous. Sure, it's a very high-end, tech-y,
flashy kind of filmmaking, but everything feels very much earned.
A very entertaining soundtrack as well: When Jann is chilling out, he listens to Kenny G. and Enya on his digital player! I always did have a soft spot for
Orinoco Flow (a.k.a.
Sail Away). The older Jack Salter, on the other hand, is more of a Black Sabbath man (in particular
Paranoid)! It's a really cool moment when Jann buys a CD Walkman in Tokyo as a present for Jack, in order to give his mentor a technological upgrade. And any movie which uses Iggy and the Stooges'
Search and Destroy has got to be considered cool by definition! (
"Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology / Ain't got time to make no apology!")
A very satisfying cinematic experience overall. I was very glad to have picked
Gran Turismo as my "
B.T.P." this week.
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