Gran Turismo

This weekend, Neill Blomkamp's newest film, Gran Turismo, was released in theaters. Gran Turismo follows racing simulator gamer Jann Mardenborough as he is recruited to race in the big leagues. With the help of retired racer Jack Salter, he has to prove to the other racers that he has what it takes to compete on a real race track.

I had a lot of fun with this movie. I found it to be very exciting with excellent pacing from beginning to end. I quite enjoyed all of the racing moments and thought they were very well done. They get you to feel the perfect amount of excitement and suspense as you wonder whether Jann will make it to the next round. I also enjoyed the whole training segment in the first half of the movie and thought the various exercises and trials they went through were very interesting. I also enjoyed how this movie ties in some gaming aspects of the film. When a race is going on, sometimes it adds a layer onto the view showing the placement of Jann and his current time like you would see in a racing video game. I thought this was a very effective way to tie in some elements from the video game. There are also a few good performances in the film. David Harbor is as great as Jack Slater. I didn't realize how good of an actor he was until I saw him in this movie. He plays the tough but motivational coach so well. I also thought Orlando Bloom did a good job as Danny Moore. He hasn't been in much since Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings, so it was fun to see him in another film. Finally, I just found the story itself to be very interesting. The idea of having gamers being brought into the real racing world is such a cool idea and the fact that this was based on a true story makes it even better.

However, I do have a couple minor issues with the film. The first was that it was just a hair too long. The run time clocks in at about 2 hours and 15 minutes. I felt it could have been trimmed down to about 2 hours. The other issue is that it is just a bit formulaic. It plays the racing underdog formula pretty hard. Granted it does the formula very well, but it still sticks to it beat by beat.

In the end, this is a very fun racing movie. While it does stick to the racing movie formula pretty hard, it does the formula very well and still makes for an exciting and interesting story.

Score: 8/10 Grade: B+ Recommendation: Check this film out