Anytime you can take an existing studio I.P, something that another may consider a point-and-shoot gig, and steer it towards that final, flapping flag with fervor and ingenuity, and having taken some unique, surprising turns along the way, you've already won the crowd over. Neil Blomkamp's Gran Turismo isn't just going to get those in the bleachers cheering, it's certain [...]
A movie splattered with the PlayStation insignia, Gran Turismo's tagline, "from gamer to racer," is both its marketing slogan and guiding credo. Of course, the Sony gaming platform (whose eponymous movie wing, PlayStation Studios, also produced the film) would be hard to avoid in the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a driving simulator enthusiast who went on to race cars professionally. However, Neill Blomkamp's brand biopic takes several artistic wrong turns, prioritizing individual, logo-splattered frames without assembling them into something emotionally coherent or visually complete. Each ill-fitting series of images is geared more towards selling you on the idea of Mardenborough as an aspirational figure who made his gaming dreams a reality, rather than portraying Mardenborough the human being — whose rigorous, deftly-acted sporting drama the film awkwardly squishes into its final half hour. For a movie that runs for two hours and 15 minutes — starting and stopping awkwardly