'Gran Turismo' Is a Long Ad With a Checklist of Clichés

Video game movies have recently been shaking the reputation they gained from decades of bad movies. There was the first Super Mario Bros. movie (1993), the long-running live-action Resident Evil series and anything Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Career Achievement winner Uwe Boll touched (House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Postal, Far Cry, the list goes on). But the past five years, we’ve seen a surge of adaptations that have won over the fans and critics alike, including animated Netflix series Castlevania and Arcane, and HBO’s zombie drama The Last of Us. And while not necessarily beloved by most critics, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, as of this writing, stands as the highest-grossing picture of 2023. Gran Turismo is not an adaptation of the game it shares a name with — but it is loosely based on the real-life story of a racing gamer turned pro racer. 

Gran Turismo follows Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a high-level player of the racing game Gran Tursimo. Jann dreams of driving cars professionally but is constantly discouraged by his father (Djimon Hounsou), who thinks Jann is wasting time playing games all day. Meanwhile in Japan, Nissan agrees to host a competition where the best Gran Turismo players in the world are invited to GT Academy for a chance to represent Team Nissan in the professional circuit. Jann qualifies for the tournament and goes to GT Academy, where he and all the other qualifying gamers are coached by former racer Jack Salter (David Harbour) to learn how to drive a real race car, with the winner of the program joining the professional circuits. 

On paper, adapting the racing game to the big screen doesn’t make much sense. For the uninitiated: The Gran Turismo series of games is a simulation of motor sports racing. No story to adapt or body of lore and characters to pull from. So PlayStation decided, rather than adapting the game itself, to take the story of one of its more famous GT Academy grads and push the video game’s accuracy as being responsible for Jann’s success. The final result is a safe-bet story with all the beats you’ve seen time and again throughout sports movies. Jann’s earlier racing career is rearranged and dramatized to fit the sports-drama template, and you can probably predict the result of each race by the time it starts. That said, the visual spectacle alone could be enough to satisfy the gearheads in the audience — the stunt driving is mixed with discrete CGI in a way that’s engaging enough to not be noticeable unless you’re searching for it. 

While not as bad as the worst gaming-movie offenders, Gran Turismo doesn’t have enough narrative meat on its bones to satisfy the cinephiles — but it has enough visual flair to entertain its target audience. A win for fans of the gaming series, but it won’t quite do enough to bring any new fans in.