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DRIVEN Send This Review to a Friend
With Sylvester Stallone providing the screenplay for 'Driven" as well as acting a key role, the temptation is to call this racing car action flick "Rocky" on wheels, but more apt would be "Rocky" by osmosis. Sylvester Stallone plays Joe Tanto, an ex-racer now hired to make up-and-coming Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue) a winner in the big race in Detroit, and he infuses Bly with values meant to make him a better person and help put him on top. Joe also gets to don racing gear and enter the competition to help out as a team driver.
Although director Renny Harlin is skilled at keeping the action pounding, with the requisite soundtrack noise and music, the screenplay scripted by Stallone is cliché-ridden. Burt Reynolds is on hand as Carl Henry, the demanding car-owner and now bound to a wheelchair. Bly is after the girlfriend (Estella Warren) of his arch opponent Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger). Stacy Edwards as a reporter takes a liking to Joe, whose ex-wife, bitchily and most unappealingly played by Gina Gershon, is now married to another driver, Memo, portrayed by Christian de la Fuente. Bly is managed by his opportunistic brother (Robert Sean Leonard), who is jealous when Joe becomes Bly's mentor after being hired by Carl, and is prepared to sell his brother out. You know there has to be a serious crash involving someone. And so it goes
The cast, except for the scenery-chewing performance by Gershon, is effective, and the film uses noted drivers to lend authenticity, but this is the sort of saga that has been made in various guises through the years. As for the racing car scenes, despite the use of computer technology and up-to-date know-how, dramatically they are still standard stuff except for one impetuous, reckless racing car chase through city streets. Back in 1966 before all the latest technology, John Frankenheimer did a more interesting job on the French Riviera with "Grand Prix," even though that story also suffered from its cliches. A Warner Brothers release.
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