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    Before Gran Turismo Inspired a Movie, It Drove Jann Mardenborough to Greatness

    The PlayStation video game’s realistic cars and racetracks helped Jann Mardenborough find his calling as a professional driver.Jann Mardenborough can vividly recount the first time he ever played Gran Turismo, the popular racing video game that would completely alter his life.While seeking refuge on Bonfire Night, a British holiday full of firework celebrations, an 8-year-old Mardenborough stumbled upon the game at his neighbors’ house. He selected a violet Mitsubishi 3000GT and began racing on the Autumn Ring track. Mardenborough went on to play the game all night, and then every day after that, showing up at his neighbors’ door immediately after school.“They got so fed up with me turning up at their house, one day the wife came across the street, knocked on our door and had in hand the PlayStation and GT 1, and gave it to my parents,” the 31-year-old racecar driver recently recalled during an video interview.It’s the origin story to the other origin story: the true, improbable one depicted in the film “Gran Turismo,” which was directed by Neill Blomkamp and opens on Friday. The movie dramatizes Mardenborough’s journey, from gaming in his bedroom to winning the 2011 GT Academy — an annual competition that, from 2008 to 2016, put the game’s best players in real vehicles — to driving formula cars professionally.The eight main games in the Gran Turismo franchise, which debuted in Europe and North America in 1998, are known for their scrupulously reproduced cars and exacting racing simulations. In the months before he attended GT Academy, Mardenborough upgraded from a plastic PlayStation controller to a homemade wooden racing frame along with a steering wheel and pedal that he bought with money his parents gave him for good grades.The competition was a godsend for Mardenborough, who was trying to sell car parts on eBay after losing a retail job; he had dropped out of college after realizing that studying motor sport engineering did not mean he could actually drive the cars.Even so, Mardenborough said he was skeptical of his chances. He had played Gran Turismo no more than an average teenage gamer after his initial fixation, had never competed in a tournament and had barely any experience driving a normal car. The first time he brought his rickety 1991 laser blue BMW E30 onto a highway was on his way to the competition.Mardenborough’s perspective took a visceral turn when he qualified for racing camp — a stretch depicted in the film that follows the finalists training in actual cars — and was given his first taste of the track.“After my first few laps, when I got out the car, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to go through life never experiencing that again,’” said Mardenborough, who served as a producer on “Gran Turismo” and as the stunt double for his own character.The director Neill Blomkamp, center, and Mardenborough, right, on the set of “Gran Turismo.” Mardenborough was the stunt driver for his own character.Gordon Timpen/Columbia Pictures/Sony Entertainment, via Associated PressMardenborough can eagerly describe the technicalities that distinguish game from reality — the sensation, for instance, of the vibration through the car seat — but said that much of the real-world feeling and reactions mirrored Gran Turismo.“When you race against real people,” he said, “everything is real.”Mardenborough, who is played by Archie Madekwe in “Gran Turismo,” went line by line with Sony over early drafts of the script, which he noted is mostly true to his life. The characters played by David Harbour and Orlando Bloom are both fictionalized but loosely based on real people. And a crash involving Mardenborough in Germany that left a spectator dead really happened, although detractors have complained about how the tragic event was translated to the screen.In the film, the crash occurs right before Mardenborough returns to the track for a podium finish at Le Mans, the famous endurance race in France — back-to-back events that form an emotional arc of setback and triumph. In reality, Mardenborough’s crash in Germany came two years after that podium finish, leading to criticism that the film’s timeline was edited to serve a narratively pat movie ending.“The order is the order, but those events happened in my life,” Mardenborough, who avoided serious injuries, said in response. “This isn’t a documentary.” He did race in Le Mans one year after the crash, and Mardenborough said the emotional battle the film constructed was consistent with his feelings.“When you believe the reason why you’re put on earth is to race a racing car, and then you’re asking yourself, ‘Do I still want to do this?’” he said. “It’s not a pleasant question to ask.”Mardenborough last competed in May and is talking to teams about potentially racing in the United States next year. And occasionally, the driver who fidgeted with a gaming steering wheel during our interview will still play Gran Turismo.If he were to race against his 19-year-old self in the game right now, who would win? Mardenborough thought for a moment.“Me,” he said with a competitive smirk. “If I put in the amount of hours I did back then, considering my experience in real life, I would be quicker. But all it is is hours.” More

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    ‘Gran Turismo’ Review: Once Upon a Pair of Sticks

    A popular racing video game series gets turned into an underdog sports drama in this big-screen adaptation.Since the late 1990s, the Gran Turismo racing games for PlayStation have brought in billions of dollars, rivaling the box-office bounties of some movie franchises. It was only a matter of time before a movie offshoot arrived, following in the tracks of other live-action adaptations of PlayStation games, including last year’s “Uncharted.” “Gran Turismo” the movie tells the true (but unlikely) story of Jann Mardenborough, a Gran Turismo maven who became a professional racer of actual cars on actual tracks.Mardenborough’s leap from pixels to asphalt was an effective advertisement for Gran Turismo as more than a game, but his transition wasn’t all smooth. In the director Neill Blomkamp’s dutiful telling, Jann (Archie Madekwe), a teenager from Cardiff, Wales, faces doubters and steep learning curves to go with the racetrack curves. His underdog story — can this digital driver make it in the real world? — doubles as an old-fashioned tale of a young man proving his worth to his family and other skeptics.Madekwe’s Jann is so unassuming that every step in his journey comes as a pleasant surprise. After Jann’s father (Djimon Hounsou) says there’s no future in gaming and brings Jann to his job at a rail yard, Jann goes off and wins a contest held by Nissan to recruit promising Gran Turismo players. (His mother, played by Geri Halliwell Horner, is a bit more encouraging.) He earns a spot in the company’s racing academy, which is overseen by a hard-nosed engineer, Jack (David Harbour), and an unctuous marketer, Danny (Orlando Bloom). Once again Jann exceeds expectations and beats out a more TV-ready competitor for the chance to race professionally.The movie begins to resemble the levels in a video game, as Jann enters races worldwide to clinch his contract with Nissan. He finally beats an obnoxious front-runner (Josha Stradowski) in Dubai and celebrates in Tokyo, but he flips his car on his next race (as the real Mardenborough did in 2015, though the film adjusts the chronology). Like many sports movies, there’s no shortage of training and competition — the perpetual buildup. A finale comes at Le Mans, the annual 24-hour race.Blomkamp’s handling of the track scenes lacks a compelling physicality, or (if you’ll pardon the term) drive — the editing and camerawork could each use a sharper sense of rhythm and velocity. That might not matter so much if it were paired with a strong screenplay, but the platitudinous script here lacks flair (though Jann does have the likable quirk of listening to Enya or Kenny G to chill out before races). Madekwe conveys a youthful vulnerability and an appealing air of quiet doggedness, even if he’s mild-mannered as a performer here. The movie doesn’t need to achieve the same levels of sensation as a wildly popular racing simulator, but it should convey excitement and dynamism in its own cinematic way. When the novelty of watching a gamer become a driver wears off, we’re left with an adequate racing drama in a medium built for so much more.Gran TurismoRated PG-13 for intense action and some strong language. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. In theaters. More