"Are video game movie adaptations finally getting better?" That is a headline I've seen a few times over the last couple of years. Are they, or aren't they? Who can say? I suspect they probably peaked with the Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat duo, but no one aims that high anymore. This movie, which is not really a video game adaptation but pretends to be one in some of the marketing, is here to answer the question with a resounding "no."
Actually, it's not that bad; it's just one of the most by-the-numbers biopics you can possibly imagine. It is fairly faithful to reality in some ways, and heavily fictionalized in others; both in exactly the ways that best paint the most generic picture you can possibly imagine. If you watch the first 10 minutes of the movie you can basically predict every single thing that will happen in the rest of the film absolutely without fail. I can't imagine what you'd guess wrong, actually, except for maybe the Fake Villain not dying a fiery death or whatever. Even specific visual effects and song appearances were predictably used once early on to plant them and then brought back exactly when you'd expect as some kind of "complete circle" cliche thing.
The movie is competently executed in that it seems like a pretty big budget movie; the visual effects work, the stunts seem real, the actors are professional, the editing does what it sets out to do. It just doesn't set out to do much, because it doesn't want to take any risks of any kind. Probably, this is the result of real people being involved; you can't really be mean to the people whose story you are telling, for instance.
I said earlier that it wasn't really a video game movie (despite being named after a video game), and that it was instead a biopic. That's actually a lie, though. What it REALLY turns out to be is a lengthy commercial. The product placement is absolutely nonstop. There are logos on everything, as there is in real racing, but on top of that they constantly center and focus those logos on everything that is happening. Endless Nissan, McClaren, PlayStation, etc, just can't get away from it. Fake marketing executive Orlando Bloom is probably having a non-self-aware celebratory champagne just thinking about it.
Of course, in addition to being a feature length advertisement, it's also an Underdog Sports Movie, which I only mention to bring up how incredibly strange is to insert a crash that killed a real life pedestrian in Jann's real life, specifically to use it as an Underdog Sports Hurdle to overcome, just a minor setback so that he can be Sad for a bit. The real accident didn't happen until long after the events of the film, and a real person died in it. It just seems a little gauche to have the characters on screen use it exclusively as a Pep Talk Mechanism - Get out there! Kill again! You can do it!
Score: 4/10
IMDb: Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story
PS: Why wasn't this movie about Lucas Ordóñez? He also won GT Academy (two years before Jann). He also raced in Le Mans and finished 2nd in his class, better than the 3rd place finish of Jann's team. And he was even on Jann's 3rd place team in real life, for good measure! Lucas was robbed. (we all know the real answer, which is that he isn't from the anglosphere)
PPS: The coolest thing about this movie is that the real Jann acted as his own actor's stunt double and did all the driving. That's probably a pretty cool thing to do.
PPPS: How mad do you think all the Japanese actors were every time Orlando Bloom tried to say the word "Nissan"? It was like his life's work was to say it as Britishly as possible.
PPPPS: Pretty dank to include "Based on a True Story" in the actual movie title rather than just as a tagline, even though they try to make it look like a tagline on the poster. I can't say I approve.
