Wasted ideas and an F1 abortion 
Rating: 1/10 (21 November 2002)

The concept of a movie about the thrills of the F1 racing circuit sure sounds good, but the subsequent screenplay is the pits. Not the F1 pits, but pits as in yuck. The screenplay tries to combine action and drama, and in the process woefully falls short on both fronts. Its a pity really, because the logline's good, the racing circuit badly needed a film made about it, and some shots in the movie are intrepid enough to suggest the promise of something better, that eventually never quite materialised.
The scene showing the F1 cars on the streets of Chicago was brilliant, but all too brief. Hey guys, you've got the concept of F1 cars in a regular street correct; and this is an action movie about racing cars, so what you need to show is a real prolonged [prooolllooonnnggeed, get it] chase scene, complete with cops and outsiders joining the melee, hyperstressed street sequences, and something great emerging at the end. What we get instead is a few seconds of street circuitry, and then the cars stop, the two guys step out, have an emotional interaction, and period, full-stop. "Last Action Hero" may not have fared all that well, but its car chase scene was brilliant, and miles ahead of this F1 abortion compiled by Stallone.
The special effects of cars flying through the air, breaking up in mid-air, the tyre falling on the spectators' gallery; all of these stand out, that is, stand out as inserted special effects. All of these pictures show a computer gleam that's lacking in the background. That's the special effects goof up.
Not that the direction is in any way special. I always had the desire to watch the innards of a racing car and its dashboard, and hoped this movie would do so at least for a minute or so. Unfortunately, they missed out on such a simple task. Then, there's the background commentary. It sounds just like any other character on screen, whereas they ought to have displayed its distinctiveness from the rest of the dialogue by getting a rapid-fire commentator, of whom there are quite a few.
The most disgusting fact about this whole business is that, as in real life when abortion often causes subsequent sterility; this F1 abortion may well have drawn the curtains on any future F1-based screenplay that could've incorporated the ingredients I have outlined above.