Driven

Time for a little Stallone retrospective.  I’ll be going over a mix of the less popular films he’s done as well as one of his biggest franchises (it’s a 50/50 guess which one we’ll do).  This stemmed from “The Ultimate Stallone Reader” which I had plenty of time to take in as I’m spending a lot more time at home like the rest of you with this crazy ass shit happening out there.

The first movie I checked out on this journey was Driven from 2001.  I’d never seen it before so that seemed like a good place to start.  It’s about upstart CART racing genius Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue (The Rules of Attraction)) and his rivalry with multi-championship winner Beau Brandenburg (Til Schweiger (Inglorious Bastards)).  As these things go they bicker off the track and naturally fight over a woman (Estella Warren (Planet of the Apes (2001))) which doesn’t end how you would predict and feels wrong (just one of many unusual decisions made).  Stallone plays an aging driver who gets asked by team owner Burt Reynolds (Silent Movie) to come out of retirement to help Bly win the season.  Sly mentors the kid and drives alongside him to keep the other cars from placing.

First thing I gotta mention is I don’t know jack shit about professional car racing of any kind.  After some research I found out that this takes place in the world of IndyCar as opposed to Formula 1.  Specifically this is about CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) which dissolved in 2003 shortly after the film was made.  If there are any racing fans out there is this any sort of intriguing glimpse into a bygone era?  Does the movie give an accurate depiction of this racing style?  I mean I assume it doesn’t but I’m always curious about accuracy in pictures.

Anyway, setting aside my lack of knowledge on the subject matter the movie is terrible.  It reeks of early 2000’s panache.  Way too many closeup shots, there’s frantic coke-fueled editing, repulsive CGI work (especially in the last race where it’s overused making certain shots look like ugly video game graphics) and a nu-metal/angsty soundtrack.  Not to mention the incessant ogling of young hot ladies in skimpy outfits.  Jesus, this combination of puke is too much for one film.

Plus all the characters are remarkably boring and one dimensional.  I didn’t give a shit about any of them including Stallone.  The casting choices are a head scratcher as well because none of the actors have any chemistry.  Relationships are supposed to have been formed and broken but every move feels contrived.  There were clearly numerous scenes that were either shortened to less than thirty seconds or excised all together because there are several montages of these clipped sections pieced together.  As a result the character development is very awkward with strange and abrupt changes.  For example Stallone has a private talk with Brandenburg (aka the villain) encouraging him to get back together with his girlfriend who’s with Jimmy Bly now.  Bly is the hero and Sly is on his team so what the fuck is he doing?!

The car racing stuff isn’t all that exciting either.  Based on this and Days of Thunder it seems hard to make official car races (not street races or car chases) engaging.  The human element is more removed because you can’t see the driver’s face or body.  In other sports films that showcase a different activity like basketball, baseball, arm wrestling, etc. you see the body contorting and the face wrenching while achieving this majestic physical feat.  With car racing it’s cars passing each other and not much else.  It’s difficult to make that cinematic.

This is almost boring.  If there wasn’t so much dated crap bombarding your brain all the time this would be such a slog.  In that sense it’s a time capsule curiosity.  Sure The Fast and the Furious came out the same year and exhibits a whole helluva lot of the same qualities but the story and the handling of the characters and the action sequences are a million times better.

I wish I could say something positive here because I dig a lot of the folks involved like Renny Harlin, Stallone (who also wrote this), Burt Reynolds and Gina Gershon but I’m struggling.

Here’s where they fucked up: several people in the picture refer to Stallone’s character’s wild past where he drove his car and his life to such a breaking point that Gershon utterly hates his guts for how he treated her and Reynolds holds a bit of a grudge because of his old antics.  Where the fuck is that movie?