Review: Driven

By Acheron on 2001-04-28 09:24:25

Sylvester Stallone is back with Renny Harlin in Driven, a story of the lives of drivers in the CART FedEx Championship.

Stallone stars as Joe Tanto, a former driver who is called out of retirement by his former owner, Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds), to help rising star, Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue), regain the focus he needs to win a heated championship battle with rival Beau Brandenburg (Til Schwieger). ?His duty, however, is to "get in the way (i.e. block)" for Jimmy, rather than fight for wins himself.

Off the track, the drivers have personal problems that keeps the competitiveness of the sport going. ?Sofia Simone (Estella Warren), Brandenburg's fiance, starts to have eyes for Bly, when her relationship with Brandenburg is on the rocks. ?Stallone becomes involved with Lucretia Clan (Stacy Edwards) a reporter doing an expose on the lives of drivers.

The plot develops more around the lives of the characters, using the racing series as a backdrop.

As you can tell from the blurb above, the basic plot for Driven is pretty generic. ?But, to say it's downright awful would do it injustice. ?The racing sequences were like none other captured on the silver screen. ?Contrary to popular belief, the CG was not abused. ?The crashes were over the top (as pointed out by current CART drivers that had cameos in the film, as well as by Stallone himself), but they physically could have happened, given the right things happened at the right time.

Obviously, there were inadmissible scenes that kept this from being a much better film. ?Part of this stems from my knowledge of the sport, part from the utter ridiculousness of the idea.

First, the driving on the city streets bit that you see in the trailer. ?Unnecessary, but at least they tied it into the story well...it's not just a random scene, as I truly expected. ?Second, the Nextel car goes over the wall into the pond, and two of the other drivers turn around and get out of the cars mid race to go save the driver. ?I'm going to call bulls**t on that one. ?It wouldn't happen. ?No how, no way.

So, in short: ?if you want to go see an action movie, and don't go expecting an Oscar worthy story or performances, you'll walk out of there entertained. ?Guys, there's lots of adrenaline, and lots of hot chicks. ?The racing sequences are amazing. ?Much of the footage was taken from actual races filmed all over the world during the CART 2000 season. ?The cameos of the real drivers were great. ?So I'm going to say that I was pleasantly surprised with this film.

Conclusion: 8.0/10.0
Great action movie with great racing sequences. ?This definitely fits into a "guys movie" category (with all of the beautiful women and the gratuitous body shots). ?It's rated PG-13 for intense racing scenes, mild to moderate sexual content(no sex or nudity), and mild language. ?Another thing, if you're one that likes to wait until video, don't. ?This is definitely something you want to see once on a big screen with an excellent sound system.

View Trailer (RealVideo)

Official Site

CART.com

Yet another note. ?To catch the CART series in live action, tune in to ESPN this Sunday (April 29) at 3:00 EST for the inaugural Firestone Firehawk 600K Presented By Pioneer in Fort Worth, Texas.

You are currently Not Logged in.
Click here to login or sign up

Subject:  

xComment: