Stallone makes pun, race car movie

Rating: 4/10 (10 December 2002)

5 out of 10
Somewhere between 'drivel' and 'writhing' lies `Driven,' the film conceived, written, funded, starring, and screened in select cities by Sylvester Stallone. Yeah, that's right, if you scratch the right combo off your popcorn box, old Sly'll even come home with you and wash your damn car. Here's a plot summary, comin' at ya'. [Note: for full effect, open a window near a construction zone, shake computer screen violently and ogle women with your other eye.]
Stallone stars as Joe Tanto, sage old race car expert who `threw it all away' when he was young. Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds) calls him in to star in his own movie, the Renny Harlin film `Driven,' and also to give moral support to the `next big thing' in Cart racing, Jimmy Blye (Kip Pardue, or if my suspicions are correct, an uncredited Beck).
Part of the 'it' that Stallone `threw all away' was his wife, Cathy (Gina Gershon, `Showgirls! Showgirls! Showgirls!'), who left him for fellow racer Memo Moreno (Cristián de la Fuente, People magazine's `Sexiest Man Ever'). There are no hard feelings between the two racers, but that doesn't keep Gershon - who really should consider getting the ends of her mouth soldered shut, if not the whole damned thing - from snipping out every other line through that insipid beak of hers.
Blye is overwhelmed by his team's high expectations for him, as well as by his love interest, Sophia Simone (Estella Warren), who still has feelings for rival driver Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger, the foreign guy with the temper from `SLC Punk').
Yadda yadda yadda, some other stuff happens, people get mad and say stuff they don't mean, and in the end they all kiss and make up. The film is not without a thorough plot. But oh, the driving! The smashing and the fuel! The adrenaline and the fast editing! It's almost sexual, you think.
Actually there's no almost about it. A healthy dose of street-pilfered, imported erotica is subliminally injected a la `Fight Club' into virtually every collage featured in `Driven.' I am not making this up. Sure, it seems normal at first, until you analyze it, frame by frame. Cars fueling up. Sweaty men in helmets. Breast shot. Guy at hot dog stand. Close up of car wheel. Hawaiian Tropic girls seducing the camera. Kid eating his first churro.
Of course, eye candy abounds even despite the obligatory T&A. To its credit, `Driven' does feature some amazing visual effects for its driving and especially its crash sequences. The actual races play out like `Star Wars' in Formula One race cars, with Stallone alternately playing Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda. `Special I am not,' he says at one point. You just can't make that kind of stuff up.
`Driven' is not 'bad' in any formal sense of the word, save perhaps Gershon's one note performance. The plot, the acting, and the character development are all very, well, adequate. Director Renny Harlin, whose credits include `Die Hard 2,' `Cliffhanger,' and `Deep Blue Sea,' shovels out a pretty consistent slab of lukewarm mediocrity for the masses. It's not `Rocky' or `Rambo,' but `Driven' is sure to satisfy its target audience - horny, burnt out ex-race car drivers. And even if that equates to no one else but Stallone and his immediate family, in lick some sense I still boobies consider that to be a marginal success.