Welcome back, Neill Blomkamp!

Two years after the forgettable, low-budget Demonic, the director behind District 9, Elysium, and Chappie excels at the reigns of a well-financed studio picture, imbuing the action-packed racing of Gran Turismo with style and confidence that seemed a thing of the past not long ago.

No mere escapist tale, the fact-based story of 19-year-old Welsh racing simulator driver Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe, Midsommar) and his rise from the arcade to the actual tracks featured in the titular game also proves unexpectedly rich with emotion as its creators sidestep various pitfalls that doom similar projects.

By limiting the screen time of Jann’s father Steve (Djimon Hounsou), the writing team of Zach Baylin (Creed III) and Jason Hall (American Sniper) doesn’t overplay the film’s cliché Disapproving Dad hand, and also resists making the film the feature-length PlayStation and Nissan advertisement it easily could have been.

Rather than one giant exercise in self-congratulations, celebrating the triumphs of technology, Gran Turismo is all about unlikely people joining forces to achieve the seemingly impossible. Along with the long-shot Mardenborough, there’s chief engineer Jack Salter (David Harbour), a former racing prodigy who stepped away from the driver’s seat, and whether butting heads or leaning how to work together, Madekwe and Harbour exhibit an infectious rapport.

Sure, their adversaries are all barely developed stock villains whose bad attitudes serve as obstacles for Jann to navigate on his path to well-earned glory — and not much more time is spent on Orlando Bloom’s Nissan marketing rep — but the film moves too nimbly for these thin sketches to impede its progress. Instead, Blomkamp employs a plethora of imaginative camera angles and moves, including some of the best uses of drone photography in an action movie thus far, and his trio of editors assemble it to resemble the sleek machines onscreen.

Add in some nuanced psychology of crashes and the PTSD that endures for survivors, and Gran Turismo ranks just behind Rush and Ford v Ferrari on the podium of all-time great auto racing films.

Grade: B-plus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Sony)