Driven (2001)

I love CART racing. I love any form of auto racing. When I first heard that Sly Stallone set production the first auto racing movie of the 21th. century I rose in excitement. I was even lucky enough to be at the Toronto Indy to watch portions of the filming as Champ car replicas roared out of the paddock. Watching this movie, I was treated to some fantastic special effects that were taken to level very close to the 1966 classic Grand Prix. Unfortunately, details of Driven's plot resembled Grand Prix too closely for this movie to be considered a creative attempt. Jimmy Bly(Kip Purdue) and Beau Brandenburg(Til Schweiger) both provided very respectable roles as co-stars alongside Sylvester Stallone playing the aging veteran driver Joe Tanto. The characters were developed enough through the film to understand their unique personalities. I was deeply impressed with how Driven displayed the drivers as understandable of their competitors and respected each other on the race track. I hate how some racing movies turn racing into a reckless grudge match. One of the worst elements in this movie is that only three drivers with the exception to happy go lucky teammate Memo Heguy (Who ran in place of Tanto for races) were shown within a twenty-plus driver field. Actual indy-style open-wheel racing is often much more competitive than shown in Driven. This movie shortfall was probably left over from the Formula One script that Stallone started with. All and all, Driven has weaknesses when comparing it as a great racing movie. But, it was a very suitable movie for family entertainment.

Fmovies: Utter and complete tripe - a film that is without any credibility, if for no other reason that it had the absolute temerity to think it could upstage Frankenheimer's 1966 masterpiece GRAND PRIX, on which it is so loosely yet obviously, based! Working on the assumption that 90% of viewers would never have seen (let alone heard of) GRAND PRIX, Stallone wrote himself a ROCKY on the racetrack.

Cornball script, z-grade fx....well thats to be expected, the Formula 1 people were never going to allow a loser like Harlin and his production flunkies anywhere near near the real thing, unlike the latitude extended to John Frankenheimer during GRAND PRIX's filming in 1965.

Look, I'm not even wasting more words on this affront to cinematic good taste. If you liked THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS you might be suitably underwhelmed by this crap!

I watched the new and read the papers and began to expect an OK, fast-paced movie that would still be fun but not a good movie. I would now like to completely disagree with every critic who gave a poor rating to this movie. There were times in the movie where I got angry at something happening but then very shortly afterwards the problem that kind of annoyed me was solved perfectly and made the movie continue to flow. The weird thing about the movie is how there are about 4 main characters, all in the movie about an equal amount of time and all equally heroic and fun to watch. And even at the point where you think they're just going to screw up the whole movie something happens to smooth out the bumps. And next not only was the songs for the movie integrated really well into what was happening, but all the songs kicked! The first thing I am going to do tomorrow is go out and buy the soundtrack. I would write more but I'd probably take up another 5 paragraphs explaining how perfectly the movie worked out its problems and everything you wanted to happen or something even better than what you wanted to happen does! This movie was incredible! 10 out of 10!

Driven fmovies. This movie was so bad that the producers owe us another movie just to bring the rating up to zero. It is an insulting slap in the face to every race fan who ever lived and I would suggest that viewers immediately initiate a class action lawsuit to recover the money they wasted on this picture and compensation for the time spent watching it. The ONLY technical aspect of racing that they got right was the fact that the cars, at least SOME of the time, had four wheels. Otherwise, it was obvious that the writer knew absolutely nothing about motor racing. I would suggest that Sylvester Stallone should have at least watched an Indy car race before he wrote this piece of junk.

The computer-generated images were so bad that they probably set back the acceptance of CGI in movies another 50 years. The acting was about as real as the cartoon-like car crashes and all the actual Indy car drivers should have had their agents collectively sue to have their names replaced in the credits by "Allan Smithee."

I would watch this movie again only if forced to, and only for the pleasure of walking out of it and demanding my money back again.

I was not giving too much credit about this movie in the beginning but after it I was very surprised. It was different since it took the the driver's point of view, all the pressure and so on. Also Sly was great and just showed a very equal point of view from both pilots.

Eventhough the main background is Indy, Formula One fans can identify easy the major stars like Shumacher performed by Brandeburg ( even the red suit from Ferrari, same hair style and same attitude) also Frank Williams is found by the team director on a wheel chair. The Brazilian driver ( that is performed by a Chilean actor with a strong accent when he says thanks) also had a booklet on Ayrton Senna another F1 driver.

Anyway for those who like a good race it is highly recommended. The soundtrack is very good too and Stallone definetly did a good job!

It's been often mentioned by other reviewers that the art of the cornball must have been engineered by Sylvester Stallone; it's just as often forgotten that true tripe goes unwatched merely because it does not go into wide, national release. So guess which movies always receive the worse rep?

Having watched the trailer and anticipated this movie for a while, I knew exactly what to expect beforehand: your typical good guy vs. bad guy, fight for glory, 'win-all-lose-all final confrontation' fare. Surprisingly, I encountered something that attempted to be a little more profound, and while it doesn't exactly hint at the meaning of existence, it explores a facet of human relationships which not many other movies in this genre have touched. The movie's tagline, "Welcome to the human race," does a nice job of encompassing all that this film discusses.

The peculiar thing about the entire setup is that, unlike all other movies in this genre, there are no defined lines. There is no good guy, no bad guy; simply a race for perfection that alludes to the way that most of us wish to live, though the path that we take is an altogether different matter. It's difficult to pick up on, but if enough attention is paid, the idiosyncrasies of each of the characters in this movie speak far more than what their dialogue brings to the table.

Where the film falters, and causes most of the audience to misperceive its message, is in its presentation. It's frenetic, loud, and highly distracting; and yet, tremendously appealing to this particular viewer. The speed with which the director cuts between shots, pans, zooms, spins, spirals, etc., go hand in hand with the feel of the sport in general, and is indeed very creative -- but it is hard to keep up with what's going on. How are we supposed to know what each character is feeling when the scene cuts away before the dialogue is even finished? How are we supposed to be even able to recognize what's happening on the screen when we're not given more than a two-second break between blaringly obtrusive rock songs? Once again, the movie alludes to the sport itself with the commercialization of its soundtrack. And while highly kinetic, and emotionally involving at times (the opening scene with the media was brilliantly executed for a Jimmy Bly point of view), it's just hard to...keep track of everything.

But in the end, the main reason anybody is going to watch this movie for is the racing, particularly the accidents that take place at excesses of 200 miles per hour. And it delivers pretty admirably, truth be told. There are a lot of interesting camera positions and perspectives to make you feel a part of the race, and the special effects could be considered top-notch. Kudos to whoever decided to not give the CG cars and items the cheap, laughter-inducing fluidity of movement that's to be found in just about any other movie with computer graphics (though there were a few scenes with this effect). It's not necessarily realistic, and a little simplistic on the artistic scale, but it reaches a satisfying level of subtlety--and at times, it's fascinating to see some of the things that can be done.

The film is not without its clichés, it sometimes forgets about or fails to discuss a few of its plot points, and the women appear to be portrayed a little 2-dimensionally. But when the crew is watching the race or practice runs from the movie's dramatic camera angles on their small overhead monito