Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo (2023) is about a video game player becoming a real racing driver, and it actually happened. Nissan and PlayStation set up a programme together: the fastest players in the game were selected, trained in real cars, and the best was placed with a professional racing team. Jann Mardenborough came out of it and genuinely finished on the podium at Le Mans. The best of the film is the transition: the difference between being good in a simulator and surviving in a real car. The body, the heat, the forces, the fear. The game has a restart button and the circuit does not. The racing was shot at real tracks and Blomkamp keeps putting the camera inside the car. The most contested thing in it is a crash. Mardenborough crashed at the Nürburgring in 2015; his car went over the barrier and a spectator was killed. The film shows the crash but moves it back to 2013, placing it before the Le Mans result. In reality the order was reversed: the Le Mans podium came in 2013 and the crash two years later. By restructuring it, the film presents a fatal accident as the hero's moment of maturing, and it was heavily criticised for that. David Harbour and Orlando Bloom are in it. It runs 134 minutes. Good for: racing films, true events, and sports drama. Less good for: the film deliberately reorders the record and the crash scene is distressing.