Posted: 04/28/2001

Driven

(2001)

by Hank Yuloff

This Stallone vehicle never gets out of the pits.

A couple of months ago, a teaser trailer for Driven was running which showed a lot race car scenes (including that Marilyn Monroe skirt flies up around her shoulder shot) and some dramatic sound and no words. I was hooked. I begged the editor of FM.com to save it for me. With a chuckle, Del said, “Sure, kid, knock yourself out.”

Then they started running the real trailer… With words. And I got scared. This was going to be one of those movies that could go either way: Really good or REEEEEEAAAAALLLY BAD. The last movie I reviewed with this feeling was Joe Dirt. It was better than expected. With Driven, I wasn’t so lucky.

Basic story and then we can discuss and dismember. Sylvester Stallone plays Joe Tanto, a sort of washed up race car driver who is called back into the limelight to train a rookie driver (Kip Pardue as Jimmy Blye) with potential. Sound familiar? Try this one: A washed up boxing trainer is pulled back into the limelight to help a rookie fighter with potential. Oh god, it’s Rocky at 1000 RPM and Stallone is taking the Burgess Meredith part.

And it’s Top Gun where Stallone plays Blye’s wing man in the races, helping him win. After the final race, surrounded by teammates and fans (a la Top Gun), I expected Blye to come over and say “You can be my wing man any time.” They embrace and then there is the “freeze frame” moment with them celebrating. Roll credits. Roll eyes. And I nearly had an Almost Famous flashback with these women who were camp followers, jumping from racer to racer on the CART circuit. And they lifted a bunch of the storyline direct from Days Of Thunder. OK, it’s CART instead of NASCAR, and has a more worldly feel instead of down home rockabilly, but there it is. I will tell you this: I saw Driven with three other people and we all agreed that we hadn’t had a good laugh at the expense of a movie in a long time.

Driven was groaningly bad. No, it was groaningly funny. It is the epitome of that category of film I have so often labeled: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Yep, the first one of the year.

Burt Reynolds’ career has bounced around a lot, and I was looking forward to seeing him as Carl Henry, the team owner. But seeing him get mad at one of his drivers for saving the life of another one of his drivers is a little maniacal. Jeez, dude, you didn’t once get pissed off that these three guys were burning through your $350,000 automobiles faster than Smokey And The Bandit destroyed state highway patrol cars, but you blow a gasket when they save another human.

70 minutes into the movie they race in a major rainstorm. Are they kidding? That’s one of the big No-Nos in racing. And director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea, Long Kiss Goodbye) glorifies the event. Here’s a direct quote: Blye: “I can’t see anything in this rain.” Tanto: “That’s OK, neither can he.” WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

At a party showing off prototype CART cars, Blye gets dumped by the blond he “picked up” when she was dumped by his arch rival (Til Schweiger as Beau Brandenburg). Holy Melrose Place! So he steals one of the cars and drives through the streets of Chicago at 195 mph. Stallone jumps into another car to follow him. Huh? And how is it that no one gets killed or we don’t see any crashes as these racecars run rings around the traffic?

And when they stop their cars in the middle of downtown Chicago, why weren’t they arrested? And why was there fuel in a prototype car? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Stallone found two actors who actually butcher the English language worse than he. Granted they are English-as-a-Second-Language type of guys (Chilean Christian de la Fuente as Memo Moreno, and Schweiger, who is German), but nonetheless the audience spends a good deal of time trying to understand what they said.

Are Brandenburg and Blye the only drivers who can win a race? They trade off victories early in the season. When Blye comes in 2nd place three races in a row, then finally wins one, a reporter asks him, “After several lackluster performances, does this mean you’re back?” A rookie comes in 2nd place three times in a row and that’s bad? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Moreno gets into a horrible crash and his car ends up in a river next to the racetrack. Blye does a 180 into oncoming traffic at 200 mph and races back to the scene of the accident to jump into the river and save Moreno. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? No wait, it gets better. Brandenburg, while leading the race at the time, does exactly the same thing! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? And they both get to the scene of the crash faster than the firefighters. And though Moreno’s stuck underwater for over a few minutes, Moreno he is still alive. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Meanwhile, the fuel from the car is leaking into the swift flowing river and there is still enough of it and it is still cohesive enough to catch fire and explode. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

One of the funniest scenes comes after this crash when the three drivers are in the hospital. First, Blye goes by wheelchair to visit Moreno who is hooked up to every possible machine. They even had the machine that goes “ping.” Immediately after, he is in his bed and Brandenberg comes into his room. What bonding. What schmaltz. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? The continuity control person must not have been watching too closely. In the first 10 minutes and later in a bar scene, you will see Estella Warren (a newcomer with 5 movies this year including Planet of the Apes) change outfits 3 times between shots when she wouldn’t have had time. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Oh, and my friend’s ex-wife is portrayed by Gina Gershon. What a totally self-involved bitch and a half. Looking for anything positive here, I’ll give most of the racing sequences high marks, except for the constant up-close-and-personal shots of the driver’s feet as they shifted gears. Ooooooooh, they’re driving. And Stacy Edwards was great as race reporter Lucretia Clan. And there was a decent amount of eye candy shown in half-second increments before every race. But except for these atmospheric pictures, Driven got rear-ended.

With Driven, pass on the left. If you want a decent racing flick, go back to Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, or rent Against All Odds for the race scene along Sunset Blvd.

Thanks to Darin, Erica and Sharyn for their help on this one!

Hank Yuloff is an entertainment industry entrepreneur living in Hollywood. And, no, he doesn’t dress up like Elvis on the weekend.

Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com