Citizen Critique - Driven

by Jeremy Browne


The first thing I thought of when I saw the trailer for Driven a few months ago was, "Please tell me they're not trying to ride the wave of post Dale Earnhardt grief with this overblown pro race car driver drama." And really, there's no way to tell for sure. All I know is that sitting in it for two hours made me want to drive at 180 miles an hour into a concrete wall.


The cinematography is fast, fun and furious, I must admit. Where they got into trouble was in trying to give it a plot. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of plots and usually prefer my movies to have them. But with Driven, it's all a melodramatic mishmash of what movie industry execs think will sell as a plot. Cliched stock characters (think old racer, new racer, hot shot racer and all the women who love them) and soap opera type drama and you've got the basic premise of this Renny Harlin-directed film. Mercifully, Sylvester Stallone stays in the background more than you'd think. I would rather have spent my $7.50 on good beer and spent the evening playing the video game "Carmageddon."