District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s true-life tale is unable to swerve the cliches yet delivers pedal-to-the-metal entertainment
South African-Canadian director Neill Blomkamp arrived with a bang in 2009 thanks to District 9, an urgent sci-fi fable that used modern fears of extraterrestrial invaders to tell an old-as-time 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 altogether more anarchically scrappy Chappie (2015) in which a sentient armoured police robot is led into a life of crime.
On the surface, this “based on a true story” account of video gamer turned race car driver Jann Mardenborough may seem like a left turn for a film-maker whose career has been built on adventurous fantasy. But if the story of a Darlington-born son of a former professional footballer parlaying video-gaming skills into international racetrack success is not 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 standing in for spaceships. No wonder Speed Racer (the manga/anime hit that the Wachowskis adapted for the screen in 2008) gets a cheeky namecheck.
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