Hey folks, Harry here... I saw this ..... today and I'm working on my review. All I can say is that everyone on this page is being incredibly kind to this ..... and do not so much as make a motion in this film's general direction... free... being paid to see it? AVOID! DETOUR!
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here with a simple question: WHY LORD?!!! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!!! I just don't get it. I'm at a movie screening sometimes four nights a week, so life is cruising along at a happy pace. But it seems like now that I've finally got a steady stream of free flicks coming my way, 75% of them are pure shite. Maybe it's more like 85%. Whatever the percentage was before last night, it's been clicked up a couple points thanks to DRIVEN, or as I like to call it BATTLE OF THE FACELIFTS (I'll explain in a minute).
DRIVEN marks Sylvester Stallone's long-awaited return to screenwriting, his last being the mostly cool CLIFFHANGER, a film also directed by DRIVEN's Renny Harlin. I'm not making excuses here, but I really liked Harlin's last film, DEEP BLUE SEA, with it's complete disregard for the rules of the biggest stars living and the lesser-known types dying. True, the shark effects were weak, but the thing kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat, and that was good enough for me. Whatever you thought of DEEP BLUE SEA (assuming you bothered to see it), DRIVEN isn't even close to being as good. On your relativity scale, you figure out what that statement means to you. In fact, DRIVEN is cookie-cutter Stallone sports movie from top to bottom. I don't want to ruin the ending, but he basically pulls another ROCKY-like ending, by not necessarily winning the big [fill in the competition--fight, race, arm wrestling] but still getting the biggest applause.
If you give two shits about the sketchy story, here it is (I will point out the cliches with capital letters): Set in the world of Formula 1 racing (some call it CART--Championship Auto Racing Teams), DRIVEN begins setting the stage for the coming season of racing. The reigning champion, German-born Beau Branderburg (Til Schweiger, who I recognized from THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS), is having his title challenged by a Hot Shot named Jimmy Blye (Kip Pardue, who I recognized from REMEMBER THE TITANS). Jimmy primary trainer is the Grizzled Veteran, Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds, looking absolutely miserable playing his role in a wheel chair). Robert Sean Leonard is The Suit, Jimmy's brother and manager, who is lining up sponsorship deals left and right and who would probably sell his own mother for an extra grand in his pocket. His black clothes tell us in an oh-so-subtle way that he is not to be trusted. Here is The Conflict: Jimmy is winning some races but narrowly losing others beca! us! e he is Out of Control. Carl is thinking about dropping him, so he calls in the Seasoned Professional, Joe Tanto (Stallone) to act as a Mentor to Jimmy as dispense Pearls of Wisdom to make Jimmy a better driver. "Once you get your head together off the track...blah blah blah"; "You have to figure out who you are before...blah blah blah"; "You have to find your edge...yadda yadda yadda"; and so on.
What's most disappointing about DRIVEN is I guess Harlin's fault, although Stallone's script is probably also a factor. I was interested in hearing the drivers and trainers discuss actual strategy. I know such things exist, and I've never heard them. So I was curious. Instead what we get are two-bit philosophy and endless montages set to the throbbing music of techno superstar "bt." The film is not even slightly interested in characters or story. I sound like a broken record saying this about so many films today, but this one goes out of its way at times to deny us characters we care about. Everyone is pared down to stereotypes, and it made me mad. There's one scene in particular where Reynolds and Stallone go toe to toe (or would that be toe to wheel?) about Jimmy's future as a driver. It is by far some of the worst acting I've ever seen. All I could do to keep from laughing was stare at their plastic surgery scars and wonder how much plastic surgery must hurt. Probably not! a! s much as I did watching them try to out-ham each other. I still can't figure out why these idiots put Burt Reynolds in a wheel chair; maybe they thought it made him look smarter. Or maybe Burt has become such a lazy actor that he doesn't even feel like walking anymore. I bet that's it.
And don't even get me started out how surprisingly cheap the special effects looked. Harlin's ham-handed use of special effects during the racing scenes is downright comical. And people at my screening laughed plenty, especially during the ultimate slap in the face to Chicago folks like myself: the Formula 1 chase scene through the streets of Chicago. Jimmy gets mad during a cocktail party and steals a car (remember, he's The Rebel); Sly (The Mentor) follows him. It looks like a Tom and Jerry cartoon drawn over stock footage of Wacker Drive evening rush hour traffic. The entire theatre was cracking up. Harlin uses computer-generated effects for many of the complicated camera movements during the races and to slow down and emphasize car crashes. And it all looks fake. I particularly liked the believability of two driver racing side-by-side, yelling at each other. Is there any way they could hear each other or drive properly under such circumstances? Maybe I'm wrong, but it di! dn! 't seem right to me.
Throw in no fewer than three pointless romances (featuring Estella Warren, soon to be seen in the upcoming PLANET OF THE APES remake; an absolutely wasted Gina Gershon; and IN THE COMPANY OF MEN's Stacy Edwards) to stretch out what should have been an 80-minute film to two full hours, and that pretty much sums up DRIVEN. But let me sum it up even better: Fuck Sylvester Stallone (the Writer). Fuck Sylvester Stallone (the Actor). Fuck Renny Harlin. Fuck Burt Reynolds hairpiece. And, by all means: Fuck DRIVEN, hard and without lube.
(Click on Steve@theMovies)
Another review of this waste of acetate...
Hey Harry,
I just got back from a screening of Driven. Actually, after what I just witnessed, Drivel is a more appropriate title. I swear, I haven't been this bored by a movie since Crapman & Robin. This flick was so painfully bad, I don't even know where to begin. It's not like I was expecting anything special. Sylvester Stallone was the star, Renny Harlin was the director, and Franchise Pictures(the folks who brought us Battlefield Girth and 3000 Miles to Graceland) were the producers. So to say I went in with low expectations would be the understatement of the century. Yet somehow I was still disappointed with what I saw.
Everyone in this movie gave a terrible performance. Now I expected that from the likes of Estella Warren(please don't f-ck up Planet of the Apes!) and Kip Pardue, but even Gina Gershon sucked. In fact, she probably gave the worst performance in the film. And believe me, that's saying something. Actually, I'll have to give her second place honors. The dude who played her boyfriend was by far the worst. My buddy and I both turned to each other at the same time and remarked how the guy seemed to be channeling Jean-Claude Van Damme when he spoke(you'd have to see it to understand, but please don't!). The only actor on this planet worse than Van Damage is someone doing a Van Damage impersonation.
The soundtrack really sucked! I don't think the film ever went for more than 5 seconds without an annoying pop song playing in the background. The story was non-existant. It's hard to believe Stallone wrote the screenplay. The same dude who came up with Rocky churned out this crap. My, how the mighty have fallen. It wasn't even funny how inconsistent the characters were. Someone would be a complete a-hole in one scene only to act like a total softie in the next. And Estella Warren's character had a serious problem deciding who she was dating.
The worst moment though had to be the infamous race through the city. If you've seen any of the trailers or TV spots, you know what I'm talking about. I have two comments about this scene. First of all, if someone needs to blow off a little steam, I think it's safe to say they're not gonna go for a little joyride in a racecar through downtown at 200 MPH. And if by chance they were stupid or insane enough to do so, they wouldn't get off with a $25,000 fine by the racing league. I think prison time and a lifetime suspension from the sport would be the more likely punishment.
Anyway, you've been warned. I wasted almost 2 hours on this crap, but at least I didn't have to pay money to see it. If you fork over your hard earned cash to see Drivel and get pissed off when you find out it sucks donkey balls, don't blame it on me.
Sincerely,
Doughboy
And here's this one...
Hi everybody - call me the Tuscan Raider. I have a report from a DRIVEN screening I saw last night. I don't want to waste anybody's time with this one. Quite simply, this is a stinker. It makes Days of Thunder look like a respectable and entertaining movie. I never thought I would say this, but Renny Harlin's direction makes me pine for the work of Michael Bay. He directs the movie as if both he and his intended audience suffer from ADD & Terrets. I take that back - that's insulting and offensive to people suffering from those conditions. What else is wrong with this movie? Well, let's see…the cheesiest dialogue this side of a daytime soap opera, bad acting from vapid Calvin Klein models, horrendous overacting from real actors, headache-inducing fast cuts that have zero motivation, ugly glossy lighting, unimaginatively shot chase scenes, the dopiest "love" montage sequence this side of Top Gun,…do you really need to hear more? Okay, okay, you say. This is supposed to be a mindless summer action movie. Why am I being so harsh? Well, let me just say that this is also a very dull movie. If you're expecting thrills, the car chases are shot and cut together in such a scattershot hack fashion that no sense of excitement is generated. In fact, I nodded off after about 20 minutes, and then woke up. I asked my sister if I had missed anything important. She assured me that I had not. Admittedly, the movie has one truly fun sequence. But this comes well after an hour has passed by. It involves a ludicrous car chase through the streets of Chicago. This is one part of the movie where the dopiness was actually entertaining. Watching this movie, I suddenly thought of Charlie's Angels. Both movies are essentially empty and silly. But the difference was that Charlie's Angeles knew exactly how ridiculous it was and everybody looked like they were having a good time. Furthermore, it had a true sense of pop verve and style. Driven is a sodden, depressingly hackneyed effort that takes itself a tad more seriously with "dramatic" scenes where actors shout bad dialogue at each other. Anyway, you get the drift. Boy, I hope this doesn't mean this summer will be a stinker.
