Driven Review

Rating: Null/10 (8 July 2003)

Jimmy Bly(Kip Pardue) is an up and coming rookie on the CART circut giving veteran Beau Brandenburg(Til Schwieger) some heat for the World Championship. Joe Tanto(Sylvester Stallone) is brought back to help Bly capture the title before the rookie crumbles.
And that's really the side-plot to "Driven". This movie really feels more like a "racing-love" story. Instead of focusing on the racing side, "Driven" thinks you'll get more out it's relationships. For this to work, there has to be some good acting and decent dialoge. Unfortunatley we get decent acting and awful dialoge. The first interaction between Sly and Gina Gershon displays some of the most gut-wrenching things I've ever heard on screen. Not to down Gina, but everytime she's on screen, her dialoge is atrocious, and giving you more reason to hate her character. The same could be said for Estella Warren. At least Gershon tried to bring some life to her character, as Estella brings almost none to Sophia. There are very few decent scenes with her, but they're so far and between you barely notice them.
Another point this movie fails on is character development. Not to say the characters aren't developed, but paper thin. All you know about Tanto's past is that he did something, yet the film never gives us any indication as to what it was except Burt Reynolds' Carl Henry can no longer walk. One thing really hurting the movie is believability. We know Brandenburg and Bly are in a points race, but does that need to be displayed every race with the two finishing first and second? The announcers are so stereotypical it's embarrassing. They sprout every cliche in the book, and making the viewer turn their face in disgust.
If you can get past the unbelievability, you'll discover the racing sequences aren't bad at all. I liked the "coin-trick" run and the "Chicago street race" may have one flaw to it, but it's still fun and interesting to watch. The final race should have been more, as it loses it's steam once the CGI makes it's way on. That's another strike, the CGI. It's passable in some scenes, but in others its downright disgraceful.
All in all, Driven just barely settles for ok. If they hadn't focused too much on relationship-development and paid attention to character-development, they might've had something.
5 out of 10