Just Awful

Rating: 1/10 (5 January 2002)

I am a huge auto racing fan, and road racing in particular. I was excited when I heard there would be a movie made with Formula One as the backdrop. When they switched to CART I was disappointed but still optimistic about the product that they might produce. I could not have been more disappointed. This movie ranks in my bottom 5 of ALL TIME.
I completely understand the need to "overdue" aspects of a movie to make it more dramatic, etc. However, the completely hokey parts of the racing were truly pathetic. I could almost buy the race through the streets (and actually was my favorite part of the movie which says a lot about what I thought of the rest) but several of the actual race scenes were just far too ridiculous. Every crash had a car launching like a rocket into the air. A car ending up in a river upside down with another driver stopping in the middle of the track and DRIVING back against traffic and cross country to save him? Give me a break.
This could have been a decent movie if they had left out the completely unbelievable scenes. Save yourself the pain and don't watch this one. Rent LeMans or Grand Prix instead or even CIRCUIT if you are a true race fan. I'm not a NASCAR fan, but Days of Thunder was truly entertaining. DRIVEN was horrible. We won't see another race movie made of 20 years because of this tragedy.