As a studio, Sony Pictures is relatively light on IP product, though the one they do have, Spider-Man, is a heavyweight. I’m not sure if the race driver simulation game Gran Turismo is franchise-worthy, but the whole presentation here is geared toward endurance. In one significant way, however, it’s a one-off: The movie is based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a British kid who went from a stone talent for the GT game to an actual career as a racer. And while I’m not sufficiently attuned to gaming lore to understand how close the connection is between GT and Sony’s Play Station, the company that gets the most attention and product placement here is Nissan, one of whose Japanese racers came up with GT as a simulator for drivers and which eventually sponsors an academy that invites the best sim drivers in the world to compete for a chance to drive the real thing. Apparently, Mardenborough’s story has been liberally altered in order to sharpen the movie’s dramatic arc, which is only to be expected, and there’s a rote quality to the storytelling that leaches whatever tension the movie might offer outside of the actual racing scenes, which are the best that money can buy.

Much is made of the disconnect in actual experience between racing sim cars and racing real cars. Jann’s father (Djimon Hounsou), a retired footballer, doesn’t see his son’s pastime as a “real sport,” but even the salty Jack Salter (David Harbour), the old school racing coach who is talked into working with the half dozen sim hopefuls who want to join the Nissan race team, never quite buys the idea that skills on the console can translate to skills behind an actual engine. Jann and the other students in the academy are constantly being told “you’re only gamers” and then, of course, they prove everybody wrong, but director Neill Blomkamp has to show this with a lot of CGI that itself looks like it was designed for video games, like when Jann imagines the real race car around him as a set of separate interlocked parts (one of the features of GT is that racers can design their own cars), though exactly how that translates into victory is not clear. Jann’s obstacles are multivalent. Orlando Bloom’s Nissan factotum, the man who came up with the academy idea, isn’t keen on Jann as the best representative of the brand until, of course, he is; and Jann’s competition, especially a smug McLaren racer (Thomas Kretschmann), refuse to take him seriously. As a result, Jann’s string of victories feels vindicating in a pleasant way, but the sailing, to use a completely different sports metaphor, is way too smooth, despite the fact that Jann at one point is involved in a horrific crash that almost kills him.

If I said the racing scenes make Gran Turismo worth seeing, it’s not going to convince people who are already averse to such sports films to buy a ticket, but Blomkamp, who made his name with the sci-fi curiosity District 9, is a very visceral director, and it’s when Jann and the other characters are in actual race cars on a track that the movie comes into its own. Obviously, the makers of the game Gran Turismo are hoping more people will be turned on by this aspect to join in the fun, but I imagine anyone who has ever had the potential of being a sim gamer is already one. And as for Nissan, no one is going to buy a Skyliner after seeing this movie. Sony Pictures should just be happy they got one decent film from this particular IP.

Opens Sept. 15 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Gran Turismo home page in Japanese