Release Date: April 27, 2001
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Kip Pardue, Burt Reynolds, Til Schweiger, Estella Warren, Gina Gershon
Directed by: Renny Harlin
Written by: Sylvester Stallone
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, violence)
Gentlemen, start your engines. Sylvester Stallone is back once more and this time he's riding in style. But while the racecars are fast and furious, the storyline and the characters go around the racetrack in no discernable order.
Sly may have won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best screenwriting in 1976 for Rocky, but that was a long time ago. His last writing efforts were eleven years ago for Rocky V, so perhaps the many nonsensical roles he's been in since have dulled his senses. His simpleminded, formulaic characters spin useless webs for themselves and ultimately go nowhere for the audience.
Foremost among these characters is rising CART racing star Jimmy Blye (Kip Pardue, Remember the Titans), who's currently on a winning streak. But he's got a big race coming up against the formidable (though slumping) Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger, The Replacement Killers), who's just dumped his girlfriend Sophia (Estella Warren, making her debut here) to get his edge back -- unfortunately this produces a love triangle which threatens to dismantle Jimmy. In order to help Jimmy win the race and get back on track, Jimmy's coach, Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds), calls on former CART star Joe Tanto (Stallone) to act as Jimmy's mentor on the track and off.
Now, all of this is fairly simplistic, so I thought we'd get a better sense of things if we took a trip through Sly's thought process. Don't worry, I promise to stop before it hurts:
"Okay, it's been a while since a racing movie has been made. Days of Thunder was the last good one, but this film will be about CART racing, not NASCAR. I'll need a young hotshot driver, Jimmy, but he can't be perfect, so we'll add a stingy manager, better make him his brother to add more tension. Tension, yeah, that's the ticket. Jimmy is struggling with his fame, so he'll need someone to get him back on track. Hell, I'm not doing anything, that'll be me. I'll put myself as the former awesome CART racer, but to save time I'll just cut out the substantial information about what made me great, oh wait, I'll just put myself in one test drive where I do an incredible trick with some coins. Coins, yeah, that's the ticket. My mentor will have to be played by a legendary actor, but to make things interesting I'll put him in a wheelchair with no explanation. We'll make the archenemies my friends as well and foreign. German, maybe. Got to have women, so I'll naturally give myself one and put one in between the other, already-feuding racers. Of course, I'm the one with the morals so I won't do much racing, though I'll try to guide Jimmy but his brother will get in my way. Got to have one big car chase scene and what better location than Chicago. Hire the guy who directed me in Cliffhanger and that just about does it. Oh, yeah, and a few one-liners and as many car crashes as possible. Yeah, that's the ticket."
And really, when you get down to it, that's probably how this movie came about, because characters and subplots are picked up and dropped with a frequency that seems to equate to Sly's attention span. Of course, guys will like it because the film never shies away from beautiful women and hot food, but any of the half-concocted themes in Sly's script are lost behind the hot dogs and disproportionately busty women.
Stallone did attempt a few thematic moments, in case you were wondering whether you read me correctly. He tried to orchestrate a few romantic moments, but neither he nor director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea) completely pulled these off. For instance, the scene where Sophia and Beau get back together to Vertical Horizon's "Give You Back" is killed rather quickly as the ridiculous chase scene through Chicago begins. Another example is Joe's advice on love to Beau (Sly gets some laughs as only Sly can) -- he tells Beau to "use your head" when it comes to making a decision about what to do with Sophia. To me, the logical wording there would have been "heart" instead of "head," but it appears that Sly had other plans.
The film's other major theme comes near the end, as Stallone tries to humanize things by adding sequences involving the life of a racecar driver. Through various takes and scenes, we see the drivers and their families -- it's heartwarming to see, but comes strictly out of the blue. Besides which, the only drivers we truly get to know are Beau and Jimmy -- these other drivers don't really mean much.
But the writing is only half the problem as director Harlin and cinematographer Mauro Fiore (Get Carter) accomplish more confusion through their execution of Sly's tale. With any sports-related film, there's always the big issue on where to put the camera, because there are so many places -- especially with a racetrack. Fiore couldn't find a happy medium, though, and ended up spinning the viewer around from side to side, cutting wildly between the crowd and track, and zooming in and out. Add the fast cars and their unnecessary, glorified crashes and you've got some really messy visuals.
On top of which, Driven had to contend with a serious editing downfall. Along with the sharp, quick edits at the racetrack, the whole story was told in sections with no logical order. It wasn't an experimental film by any means, so it didn't work and had no business trying to. The film was too busy in all the wrong places, and if I had to choose one word to describe this film, it would be "random." Hardly anything flows or makes linear sense, but if anything, the film did make a few cents with profuse publicity for Target and others.
Essentially Stallone and Harlin tried to make a film about racing that wasn't about racing. While the idea was good, it didn't develop. The quick transitions did nothing to connect with the audience (or settle any nerves) -- so really, Driven is the same kind of adrenaline/testosterone hit you can find on TNT's Movies for Guys Who Like Movies -- except for free.
all contents © 2001 Michael J. Eiff