Granted, it’s been about a month since I watched this video game racing adaptation, but I don’t know why Sony would wait a month to add audio description. This review is based on the fact that when I initially watched this, it had no audio description, which is insane. Sony has more than enough money to put audio description on this title, and the fact that they didn’t on Netflix, or even in the Apple Store, really boggles the mind. Turismo was never my racing game. I enjoyed other franchises more when I could see.

My favorite game had to be Rush 2049. I knew all the cheat codes to put into the number pad. 8675309. I also knew every shortcut. The game was in the little arcade at the first theatre I worked for. Then, I moved to Orlando, and I have no shame in admitting that I actually had an annual pass to DisneyQuest, and there was Rush 2049 again. I spent my first summer going there at least once a week, where I met the same youth, and I finally was racing against players who knew what was up. i went from dominating a game in a movie theatre lobby, to racing against people who knew all the shortcuts I knew. God help some random tourist kid who tried to race one of us. it really wasn’t even fair.

But, despite a racing film called Rush, it has no relation to the video game. There was no Rush Academy that called me up as one of the best racers to possibly get to do the real thing. And that’s why I bothered to tell the story, because that is Gran Turismo. If you’ve ever looked at that game, and wondered how on earth a film could be made from it, they did what Tetris also did, and told a different story.

So, Gran Turismo (from District 9 director Neil Blomkamp) is the true story of racers who had seriously high scores on the video game and got a chance to prove that the game was so good it could produce a real racer. The cast features David Harbor as the grizzled racer tasked with training the newbies, and Orlando Bloom runs the facility.

Aside from the lack of audio description, the film lacks the section where we get to know the other racers. It’s always assumed, as if everyone knows this story, that this one kid will come out on top, so they don’t bother developing the competition. Look, we all knew Katniss would survive the Hunger Games, but we still got to learn about several other tributes, especially Rue. All you gotta do is just try.

The rest of this film, for a blind person, is sound design. It’s a lot of racing, things going vroom vroom, and an eventual storyline about a son being accepted by his father.

I’m impressed that this was the direction they took. None of the characters or performances are particularly memorable, but also not bad. This needed to embrace what it was a lot more, and it’s disappointing to know that a visionary like Blomkamp is behind this. it should have been better.

The lack of audio description on this made it a pretty awful experience, as I didn’t know who these racers were, as underdeveloped and one note as they are, and most of the film is sound effects. There’s no suspense in that, if I don’t know who is winning, or how far behind our lead is. It’s a worthless experience, but this movie might be just OK if it had audio description.

Final Grade: Unwatchable

Predicted Grade Range: C, C+, B-