Not character-DRIVEN

Rating: 1/10 (20 May 2001)

***WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD***
Not that Driven wasn't enjoyable at times, but the story was a bit too... sparse. Moreover, Driven suffers from a number of problems: an overabundance of characters, the evaporation of numerous subplots, and way too much ambiguity.
Quite frankly, there are too many characters in this script. Memo Cristián de la Fuente) and Cathy (Gina Gershon) are two such characters; the female reporter Lou (Stacy Edwards) is another. Having Joe's ex-wife Cathy taunt him with her remarriage to Memo not only does nothing for the plot, it's a distraction. Lou's "love" storyline with Joe seems to be going somewhere at the start, but then it is more or less dropped, leaving us with only shots of them bonding in montage sequences. And Memo's insecurities and false bravado, while interesting, take away time from the main characters: Beau (Til Schweiger), Jimmy (Kip Pardue), and Joe (Sylvester Stallone).
The script also suffers from ambiguity in other places. When Jimmy meets Sophia (Estella Warren) at a bar after her breakup with Beau, he tells her she's only looking for a friend, and he seems to be okay with that. Yet they seem to develop a relationship without *any* on-screen physical contact. This is a major problem, as it leaves their relationship ambiguous, and confuses the action in the party scene where Sophia leaves Jimmy to go back to Beau.
Overall, while Driven should be recommended for racing/crash enthusiasts, it is not for those who enjoy (pardon the pun) character-driven films. Had the screenwriter (Sylvester Stallone) taken out some of the characters, fleshed out the relationship between some of the more important ones, and resolved any subplots he felt the need to throw in, this script could have been far better.