Driven to stop the movie

Rating: 2/10 (12 February 2002)

If you invite a bunch of friends over for a movie party, but the night is getting a little old and you want to subtly kick everyone out, pop in Renny Harlin's Driven. A recent viewing I witnessed resulted in more than half the audience leaving before it was over. Only four people made it all the way through. Of course, those four felt extremely rewarded. For you see, although Driven fails to achieve most of its goals, it succeeds on other levels.
Before the film even starts, its hero, Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue, a name that would better serve a game show host) is wracked with self-doubt. He's the greatest rookie Indycar driver ever, so naturally he's upset about how horrible his fantastic life is. Pardue spends this portion of the movie pouting and playing with his hair.
Joe Tanto (Sylvester Stallone) was a great driver, but then he freaked out, but now he's better, so he's brought in by Bly's mentor Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds) to play Mickey to Bly's Rocky. They spout dialogue about driving for fun, and losing fear, and finding fear, and losing driving, and fearing finding fun, and all sorts of very deep, philosophical materials. They also share a chase through the Chicago streets in 200 mph Indycars. Of course this behavior has absolutely no repercussions whatsoever.
By explaining the plot in large detail, I might actually be doing the movie a disservice, for, upon viewing, it feels like the creators didn't much pay attention to silly trifles like "plot" or "conflict." Essentially every scene is a car racing scene or a setup for more racing; and even crucial scenes that expound on the multi-faceted relationships of the race car drivers take place at tracks. Don't these guys have homes? Or at least hotel rooms?
If the plot had been terrible, it would have been enough. But what in the world was Stallone thinking when he made a movie without a single antagonist? European driver Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger) seems like a villain, but he repents his ways thanks to Stallone's teachings, and instead of fights or even races, people settle their differences in taut, riveting apologies. Burt Reynolds has a few scenes where he yells, but by the end he's cheering alongside everyone else as our three heroes are showering each other in champagne.
If the characters had been terrible, it would have been enough. But what in the world was Renny Harlin doing editing his movie like a two hour commercial for Nextel, Motorola, and women's behinds? Scenes are chopped up and filled with jump cuts, the cinematography is blown out and overexposed, and the editing frequently jumps the line of action. It seems like Harlin saw a few too many Steven Soderbergh movies and tried to emulate.

Stallone's already applied the Rocky formula has been applied to Broadway dancing and arm wrestling, and in Driven it gets applied to Indycar racing with rather weak results. It's no wonder it got nominated for all those Razzies; this movie is a tremendously successful failure.