ALTERED STATES

“Gran Turismo” and Fremont.”

- ANTHONY LANE

All credit to “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” an odd couple if ever I saw one, for saving the summer box office, but the feast of moviegoing cannot last forever. Famine awaits. Look at the lineup that looms ahead: more “Trolls,” more “PAW Patrol,” yet more “Hunger Games,” a third shot of “The Equalizer” and of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and a fourth dose of “The Expendables,” who are evidently not. Already in cinemas is “Meg 2: The Trench,” a shark-infested swamp of joylessness. Much of it takes place on the ocean floor, in a confounding murk; the one bright patch is the opening scene, which is set sixty-five million years ago, around the time of Henry Kissinger’s tenth birthday.

Now we have Neill Blomkamp’s “Gran Turismo.” The title refers to the video game, familiar to the bleary eyes of PlayStation devotees, which allows the user to relish all the thrills—and, in painless form, the spills—of high-speed driving without the shame of environmental pollution or the torment of bickering about a parking spot. The movie’s hero is Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), a shy youth from Cardiff, the capital of Wales, who pledges himself, with priestly zeal, to the practice of Gran Turismo. When the chance arrives to test his talents in an actual car, on a tangible racetrack, with rivals hurtling around him, he doesn’t hesitate. One moment he’s sitting in his bedroom in Cardiff; the next he’s on a private jet to Vienna. Talk about social mobility.