Let me start by saying hats off to Sony and PlayStation for putting the effort into making this. Growing up, most car enthusiasts spent a lot of time playing Gran Turismo on their PlayStation 2 and that’s where we got to learn about the different parts of a car that come together and make the whole car. So, to finally see this come to reality after years, makes the kid in all of us jump for joy.

It was revealed in July 2013 that Sony Pictures was working on a Gran Turismo movie, with Alex Tse serving as the scriptwriter and Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti serving as the producers. The movie was scheduled to be directed by Joseph Kosinski in 2015, with a fresh screenplay by Jon and Erich Hoeber. However, the Kosinski version stopped progressing by 2018.

A cinematic version of the Gran Turismo video games by Polyphony Digital was revealed to be in the early stages of development at Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions in May 2022. Jason Hall’s script was soon after selected for Neill Blomkamp’s direction, and Sony established a date for its release. 

This movie, or rather a documentary in the form of a movie, puts you in the shoes of a young British professional racing driver by the name of Jann (pronounced as Yaan) Mardenborough and was portrayed by actor Archie Madekwe. 

He plays a kid who is obsessed with Gran Turismo games and even has his own simulator at home. Which shows you how dedicated he is. Now, the reason I called this a documentary is because everything in here feels rushed and the fact that it’s based on a true story. The character arc is rushed, the relationship between the main actors and the supporting actors is rushed and the storyline basically goes at 390km/h.

You just see them jumping from one place to another. It’s like the “movie” is just trying to get to the point by skipping storylines because they had to fit everything in a time frame of two hours plus.

I loved the racing, the sound of the cars, the adrenaline rush that the drivers had and the fact they start the movie with the Honda NSX. But the documentary was basically set in a way where they show a kid who loves Gran Turismo and makes it into the Nissan team and races in famous tracks around the world and in between, you have these love-hate relationships between characters. There is no arc shown in their relationship. For example, Jann is in love with a girl named Audrey but no background whatsoever was given between these two characters. How did they meet, or what’s the connection between them? None of these are shown. I get that this is a racing “movie” but as a movie, some background has to be shown.

But I got to say, David Harbour did a really good job of being a supporting character. They did try to add some humour to his character, but it felt forced and Harbour is just not the comedian type. What I like though, is that they kind of gave Harbour’s character, Jack Salter, a bit of a background on why he called quits on racing. Other than him, the other supporting characters had little to no background.

Another thing I appreciated was the fact that they did get most facts about the cars right, unlike some car-related movies that just say stuff to sound like they know what they are talking about. For example, Salter said that racecar drivers experience more G-Force than astronauts experience in a space shuttle lift-off. Which is true because a space shuttle at lift-off gets three to five G’s while racecar drivers, especially track-modified cars get around six to eight G’s around race tracks.

Now we move on to the rival, Nicholas Capa, played by Josha Stradowski. Actually, I wouldn’t really call him a rival but rather a rich douche. He was just there to play dirty and talk smack which was annoying. But if that’s what they were going for, they pulled it off. He was the type who would do whatever it takes to win due to the fact that he allows his emotions to mess with his consciousness. 

Jann however, had a bit of a backstory and a character arc. But even this is thanks to Harbour’s role. Only both of them had a proper relationship arc, like a father-son concept. Jann’s father was there but not as much as Salter. After the terrible crash at Nürburgring, which I won’t go further into details on what happened, Jann would have probably ended his racing career there but thanks to the relationship shown between Jann and Salter, he continued.

Now the animations and graphics in this were amazing, cause of Sony and PlayStation. The way they filter through the actual game and back to reality, especially when the driver is placed in a simulator and his imagination transforms it into an actual cockpit. They added camera angles that one would see when playing Gran Turismo with the HUD information and made reality look like a game. 

Even the cinematography was brilliant and it actually captured the likes of an actual race which gave us the adrenaline rush while watching Jann and Capa neck to neck at the final lap of the 24-hour LeMans race where we were shocked to see… Well, you’ll find out when you watch it.

Overall it was a solid eight out of ten. So, before you watch this documentary/movie, keep in mind that this is not your typical action/racing movie and that it’s a “get to the point” film. However, this was way better than the life-scarring 2014 Need For Speed movie.