Driven
A film that pretty much does for the sport of Indy CART racing what Any Given Sunday does for football, this is a film that has drawn enormous criticism for its lack of realism, but then again how many popular movies about other professions can say otherwise? The film follows a group of racers, some friends, some adversaries, over the course of a single season, with the main group being managed by Burt Reynolds. The longtime icon and former undisputed King Of Hollywood spends the film in a wheelchair here, but still invests the role with his one-of-a-kind masculinity, as he brings back a former champion racer played by Sylvester Stallone to serve as a mentor to a promising rookie losing his focus. Watching these two 70s legends finally interacting in a film together is a joy to see, and Stallone (who wrote the screenplay) infuses it with his stock sensitive-macho dialogue that has become his trademark. Unfortunately, as the young lion racer who is the focus of the story, Kip Pardue is a big letdown, not fitting in with the rest of the cast and bringing a mannered pretty-boy performance to the table that fails to interest the viewer in him, so much so that more likely we are inclined to cheer on his rival and former champion played by Til Schweiger (later to become famous as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz). The fact that his character is presented as a fully-rounded likable person as opposed to a heartless bastard (like Cary Elwes in Days Of Thunder) is almost refreshing for this type of story, and the script’s greatest accomplishment is showing how heated rivals still maintain a high level of respect and camaraderie with each other despite the fact that they are risking their lives against each other on the track in the name of competition. As the beautiful girl who comes between the two racers, Estella Warren is certainly no Meryl Streep, but handles many of the emotional scenes quite well despite an obvious lack of acting experience. Rounding out the main cast is Stacy Edwards as a mostly useless reporter covering the races, Gina Gershon as the bitchy ex-wife of Stallone now married to a fellow racer and friend of his, and Robert Sean Leonard as Pardue’s materialistic agent and brother who doesn’t realize that the pressure he is imposing is causing his sibling’s downfall. The script certainly takes liberties with plausibility, as when Stallone and Pardue race their cars on the streets of Chicago narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic, or how every race depicted in the movie seems to have a spectacular, near-fatal crash involved, but director Renny Harlin displays enough showmanship in the best Michael Bay tradition by never letting the movie get boring and employing an exciting POV style in the races themselves. Overall, not the greatest written effort with some hambone dialogue and ridiculous plot points, but still an exciting, fast-paced, adrenaline ride with some good actors involved…
7/10