Don’t call them nerds anymore. Not antisocial, not inept, not mentally ill. Children who grew up with a joystick in their hands know how to live and, most importantly, drive cars like professionals do better.
This is the case of teenage Jann Mardenborough, the son of a soccer player, who spent his childhood in his room in front of a PlayStation, racing on Gran Turismo tracks until he won the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy, a racing simulation to choose gamers to become professional pilots.
Thus, Yann catapults, overcoming the resistance of the family, from the joystick to the steering wheel, from the screen to the hot asphalt. In a jump, the boy first flounders, becoming a professional, then leaves home, killing himself with training, managing pressure and adrenaline at previously unthinkable levels. His mentor is Jack Salter (David Harbour, the film’s best-written and best-acted character), a dubious former racing driver turned disillusioned engineer intent on licking the wounds of his traumatic past on the track.
Except that reality is more complex than a video game: in the race, rule violations, dangers, unexpected events, even mortal risks multiply. Jann, thus forcibly pulled out of his comfort zone, must meet ever-increasing responsibilities in order to finally be admitted to the professionals.
It is in the inner focus of the film, shot through the eyes of a child prodigy, that Neill Blomkamp plays his best cards. Exuberant, pyrotechnic, let’s say, “attractive” direction, nevertheless, withstands the dramatic tenor without falling into causeless sensationalism, trying, indeed, for narrative purity, to accompany all the emotional turns of its protagonist. And not only that, but among the hovering drones on the track and the techno-trap soundtrack, coming of age on a racing car hybridizes with the photorealism of a video game that flows into reality, and vice versa, giving the plot stylistic exuberance and harmony of tone.
However, focusing on Yann does not exclude a panoramic, sociological look, curious to sneak into the paddock, among journalists and checkered flags, among bolts, wheels and silencers, in the pre-chaos chaos of the boxes, among the jubilant public. . In a word, the race for Blomkamp is always an event, and it is a pleasure to attend it.
However, between the realism of the video game and the adrenaline rush of the narrative, there is a feeling that the script, so transparent and linear, perhaps due to too much commitment to the original reality, does not play all the cards in the best way: there is no problem between romance between Jann and Sarah, Archie Madekwe himself in the role the protagonist is not entirely convincing, without considering the conflicting mass of the family, out of place in the central part of the narrative.
In short, the core video realism remains the same, it doesn’t escalate into an artistically original and syncretic expression, but Blomkamp, between product placement, famous cast (there’s also Orlando Bloom, the visionary Nissan manager who hires Yann) and images already “packaged”, constantly dancing on a double strand of reality-fiction, racing-video game, eventually he falls to his feet (thanks also to the impressive international production).
Cleverly, he keeps silent from the true fact of departure, away rockythe legendary backbone – an amateur who got a chance of a lifetime from the sky – in order to win, in addition to video game enthusiasts, a very wide audience and join the succession of successful video game products at the moment (from unknown To Super MarioNot forget Last of us).
In fact, the ambition is to repeat his actions at the box office; the action promises to be massive, italian release edited by Photos eagle, since the end of August due to the Hollywood strike, has been postponed to September 20. Will it be real glory?