Gran Turismo review: A glorified PowerPoint presentation for Nissan and PlayStation

Gran Turismo, PlayStation’s ultra-realistic racing simulator game, has found an unlikely path to the big screen. Instead of a conventional adaptation, it’s the “based on a true story” account of how a Nissan marketing exec, back in 2008, came up with the galaxy-brained idea of recruiting the game’s most skilled players and training them as real drivers on real tracks. Supposedly, it demonstrated the simulator’s realism, and several of these gamers-turned-drivers went on to achieve podium positions at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Bathurst 12 Hour races. It was certainly a safer option than parachuting Call of Duty players into active war zones.

It’s an interesting footnote in Gran Turismo’s history. Gaming is still a stigmatised medium. Yet, the ease with which these console players acclimated to life behind the wheel makes the case that these simulators can, in fact, offer people a convincing simulacrum of experiences they’d never otherwise have access to. For a millisecond, Gran Turismo gestures towards the elitism of a sport that can’t exactly be practised in the average person’s back garden, and which has become simply another extension of the luxury lifestyle (in order to hammer the point home, the film’s rival team drives gilded, Moët & Chandon-sponsored cars).

But, despite Neill Blomkamp having previously parcelled up social commentary in accessible, audience-friendly stories such as District 9 and Elysium, the director seems completely defeated by Gran Turismo. It’s a film that might as well have been the marketing department’s power-point presentation. Danny Moore (based on real-life Nissan exec, Darren Cox, and played here by Orlando Bloom) pounces onto the scene with an entire clip of consumer-tested catchphrases. Nissan’s sales are under threat, and he’s blamed it all on those pesky millennials who would “rather be on their phones in the back of an Uber than dream of the open road”. Go forth, and pollute!

And so, Danny dreams up the GT Academy, an intensive boot camp that finesses the virtual skills of Gran Turismo’s biggest superfans into practical racing know-how. He even finds a potential champion in Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), another real-life figure and one of the more successful graduates of the academy. But, though the real Mardenborough served as Madekwe’s stunt double, the character we see on screen is a fairly listless guy who tends to freeze up mid-race. Any raw, hidden talent is obscured by the film’s intrusive infographics, weightless CGI crashes, and questionable logic.

Bloom, who made his name playing chivalric heroes with just a dash of mischief, doesn’t seem to know what to do with a character who bears all the traits of sociopathy. Geri Halliwell, for some reason, plays Jann’s mum, opposite a wasted Djimon Hounsou as his dad. She remains aggressively Geri Halliwell for the film’s entire runtime.

Better served is David Harbour, who plays the academy’s chief trainer Jack Salter, and whose signature surliness allows him to serve as audience surrogate. He’s the only one, after all, to consistently point out the obvious: “if you get in a wreck out here, you can’t hit reset”. And it’s hard to disagree with his cynicism when Gran Turismo seems convinced its ultimate victors aren’t these plucky gamers-turned-drivers, but PlayStation – every win, we’re plainly told, is really because the company put out a product of such stunning, true-to-life accuracy.

Jacques Jouffret’s cinematography is so slick and advertorial that the entire film may as well have been hallucinated by Danny, perhaps after one too many Pimm’s at the corporate glamping retreat. Nothing here feels real or tangible. You could argue that makes for a better recreation of the game – but then why bother heading to the cinema when you simply could stay home and hop on a controller?

Dir: Neill Blomkamp. Starring: David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Archie Madekwe, Darren Barnet, Geri Halliwell, Djimon Hounsou. 12A, 134 minutes.

‘Gran Turismo’ is in cinemas from 9 August