Review: Gran Turismo offers thrilling underdog tale

Gran Turismo offers a rollicking good film, an instant sporting classic in the fine tradition of the total underdog trashing the gainsayers. And the truly remarkable thing is that even those of us who find absolutely nothing of interest in gaming and even less of interest in motor sport will find it absolutely impossible not to get swept along with it.

At the start Jann Mardenborough’s dad (Djimon Hounsou) is having a bit of a whinge that young Jann would rather sit in his bedroom playing on his PlayStation than come outside and kick a ball around. And fair enough. My sympathies are all with his dad at this point. But look where sitting in his bedroom eventually gets Mardenborough in this real-life story brought to the screen…

While Jann – very sweetly and awkwardly played by Archie Madekwe – is staring at his screen, Orlando Bloom is the Nissan executive who comes up with the whackiest of wheezes for getting us all to fall in love with cars again. He persuades Nissan to launch a competition which will turn the very best gaming driver – or sim driver – into an actual real-life professional racing driver.

The chief mechanic he picks (David Harbour) is initially aghast. As he says, how on earth is someone used to playing with a computer in their bedroom going to survive if you shove them into a 200mph rocket? And again, fair enough. Sir Alf Ramsey never came knocking on my door whilst I was flicking to kick on the Subbuteo turf…

But somehow it all comes together. Jann wins his trial to get selected for the try-out and then as the contenders are booted off one by one, Jann starts to filter towards the top and that fabulous-sounding contract with Nissan to race for them professionally.

But then other kinds of problems start to emerge, not least the fact that the professionals are just a little bit resentful of a sim racer thinking he can compete with the big boys – rather as you imagine the panto performers are every year when the producers shove into the cast some fleetingly-famous reality TV star. And in fact, it’s a proper pantomime-esque villain that we get here too, a rival racer from the professional camp who’s determined to shove Jann off the track at every opportunity.

But Jann confronts it all, even when he hurtles off the course in an accident which kills a spectator. It’s simply another thing that it is going test him to the limit: has he really got what it takes to face down every one of the demons – from self-doubt to guilt – continuously nibbling away at him?

Well, there wouldn’t be a film if he hadn’t, would there? And it’s a hugely enjoyable film too, one that captures the dreams and the excitement, the nervousness and the challenge – one which puts so much in Jann’s way and one which leaves us willing him on to overcome everything that’s lobbed at him. It all ends with the customary real-life photos shoved up alongside stills from the film – just so that we know that the look and the feel have been absolutely right.

Hardly necessary. It’s been convincing and fun from first to last.