South African-Canadian director Neill Blomkamp hit it big in 2009 with District 9, an urgent sci-fi fable that used modern fears of alien invaders to tell an ancient story of racism and segregation. Blomkamp's interest in wryly satirical socioeconomic sci-fi continued through the big-budget ecocide parable Elysium (2013) and the much more anarchically rudimentary Chappie (2015), in which an intelligent armored police robot is brought to a criminal life.
On the surface, this "based on a true story" account of video gamer-turned-racing driver Jann Mardenborough might seem like a left turn for a filmmaker whose career has been built on adventurous fantasy. But if the story of a Darlington-born son of a former professional footballer who combines his skills with video games to achieve success on international racetracks isn't the stuff of fantasy, then frankly what is? While the narrative roots may be "real", at heart this is essentially The Last Starfighter with fast cars replacing spaceships. No wonder Speed Racer (the manga/anime hit the Wachowskis adapted for the screen in 2008) has a cheeky name.
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writers: Jason Hall, Zach Baylin, Alex Tse
Stars: David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Archie Madekwe
Named a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International in 2017, Archie Madekwe proves himself onscreen as Jann, an ardent PlayStation devotee who grew up in Cardiff and spends every spare moment honing his skills on the Gran Turismo console. “Sooner or later, you're going to have to get out of this room,” declares Jann's father (Djimon Hounsou), a view shared by his mother who gently cajoles him. (The fact that Jann's mom is played by Geri "Ginger Spice" Halliwell-Horner is actually a lot less distracting than it sounds, even when she's delivering such timeless comments as, "These lentils are pretty good" and " He's just going to Northampton!").
What neither parent expects is their son's gaming skills to earn him a spot in a GT Academy competition hosted by smooth-talking car dealer Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom, who else?). Moore's plan, which he introduces to Nissan, is to sell "the dream of the open road" to a generation of couch potatoes, turning "simracers" into real-life motor lovers. "If you get into an accident here, you can't reset!" insists Jack Salter (David Harbor in movie thief guise), the gruff coach and "freaky driver" who reluctantly becomes Jann's mentor after realizing they are both strangers. “Nobody wants you there,” he warns as console jockey Jann gets behind the real steel wheel. "The mechanics are going to hate you." And in fact they do
What follows is a formulaic, against the odds sports story that hits all the clichés of the genre—court rivalries, outsiders making their way, tensions between private life and public persona, ecstatic highs, tragic highs, and inevitable resurrections. in the third act) while still retaining a spark of invention, thanks to the peculiar virtual/physical dichotomies of Mardenborough's story. Focusing on this central paradox, Blomkamp visually blurs the line between simulated and "real" racing throughout. When young Jann plays in his bedroom, the graphics evoke a virtual vehicle around him, turning his home into a race track. Later, when he's away, the real world is reimagined as a game, replete with interstitial graphics ("Second Place!"; "Goal Achieved!") from Jon S. Baird's recent film Tetris.
Meanwhile, the chalk-and-cheese duality of Jack's old-school tar sand and Jann's next-gen gaming expertise manifests as a musical battle between Black Sabbath (whom Salter listens to on a Walkman) and the combo Enya/Kenny G that's the Mardenborough style. favorite mix to relax with headphones. It's not subtle, but it allows for a strange pairing bond in broad strokes, greasing the cogs of human gears even as the images send us spiraling through pistons and out through tailpipes a la Rob Cohen, who launched the franchise in the 2001 racing film The Fast and the Furious.
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