The story promise of “Gran Turismo” sounded quite preposterous to me when I heard about the film a few months ago, and it is a shame that its unbelievable true story is reduced into a bland conventional underdog sports drama story. Yes, it surely delivers fun and excitement to some degree, but it does not have enough energy and personality to distinguish itself, and my mind simply checked out its every clichéd moment one by one when I was watching it during an early Sunday morning screening.

The movie is based on the real-life story of Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a young British lad who was initially a top-notch gamer of that famous racing simulation video game called Gran Turismo but then became a professional race car driver thanks to a rather outrageous training program promoted by Nissan. Yes, as reflected by what is shown in the film, Mardenborough and several other skilled gamers were really trained to become real professional race car drivers, and he and his colleagues actually showed some notable results at a number of prominent international competitions including the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France.

The early part of the film shows how that unorthodox training program for Mardenborough and other gamers was started by Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), an ambitious marketing executive of Nissan. After succeeding in persuading his bosses in Tokyo, Japan, Moore quickly embarks on recruiting and selecting ideal gamers to be trained, but he also has to find someone good enough to teach and train them, but, not so surprisingly, nearly all of trainers on his list show no interest in his proposal. In the end, he approaches to someone at the bottom of the list, and that is Jack Salter (David Harbour), an American trainer who was once a prominent professional race car driver in the past. Just like many others, Salter shows understandable skepticism at first, but then he accepts Moore’s offer mainly because he cannot stand the arrogant attitude of a well-known professional race car driver for whom he has worked for a while.

Meanwhile, Mardenborough is excited to get a chance to become a real professional race car driver thanks to his prominent game scores, but his father is not so impressed to say the least. As a man who was once a promising professional soccer player but ends up being stuck with a menial job, his father understandably keeps saying that he should be more realistic about his life, but Mardenborough is still determined to do his best for entering the world of professional racing, and we subsequently see him and a group of other recruits beginning their training process under Salter’s supervision.

Right from their first day, Salter does not pull any punch on how much they will endure and compete, and they surely come to experience how much driving a real race car is different from playing their favorite video game. For example, they need to improve their physical strength a lot in one way or another, and they are also often reminded that there is always considerable risk and danger once they begin to drive fast along the racetrack.

It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that Mardenborough eventually distinguishes himself more and more despite being around the bottom of the rank at first, but the screenplay by Jason Hall and Zach Baylin does not bring much life and personality to its hero, and this serious flaw consequently undermines Archie Madekwe’s sincere efforts. Although he is not a bad actor as far as I can see, Madekew sometimes struggles with his character’s rather flat personality, and he also does not have much chemistry with Maeve Courtier-Lilley, who is unfortunately stuck with a perfunctory love interest role.

In case of several racing sequences in the film, they are fairly good on the whole, but director Neill Blomkamp and his crew members sadly resort to frantic camerawork and choppy editing a bit too much in my humble opinion. There are some thrill and excitement as expected, but we feel rather distant to whatever is happening across the screen, and we are not so involved much in what is being at stake for Mardenborough and several other characters including Salter.

At least, several main cast members in the film acquit themselves well despite their broad archetype supporting roles. Although he often chews his several big moments more than required, Orlando Bloom’s possibly intentional overacting makes an amusing contrast to the low-key no-nonsense attitude of David Harbour, who has been one of the most dependable character actors working in Hollywood since his breakout Emmy-nominated turn in Netflix TV series “Stranger Things”. Although he has to handle a bunch of clichéd moments along the story, Harbour delivers them with enough conviction, and he is the main reason why the movie works from time to time. In case of Djimon Hounsou, he does not have much thing to do besides looking stern as Mardenborough’s disapproving father, but I must point out that he does more acting here compared to when he appeared in a number of Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe flicks.

Overall, “Gran Turismo” is not as awful or ludicrous as I worried, but it is still not good enough for recommendation despite several enjoyable elements in the film, and I can think of several better alternatives right now. To be frank with you, I sometimes wonder whether I overrated James Mangold’s Oscar-winning film “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), but that thrilling movie, which is also based on a real-life story associated with professional racing, has enough spirit and personality to propel its familiar story and characters at least, and maybe you will have a better time if you watch that solid racing drama film instead.