Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Driven is a rock song of a movie. You don’t even have to know the lyrics to get it – it just is – but even if you do understand a line here or there, you realize the subject matter is pretty shallow anyway. That’s Driven. The cars are fast, the babes hot, and the music is cranked.

The problem is that while a rock song is great for a few minutes, a two-hour number can be maddening, particularly when all the riffs are so simple and familiar to begin with. Sure, this is an unabashed Bruckheimer-esque actioner, so one expects (and perhaps even desires) the production to be slick and thunderous. But with a veneer of pretense coating this silly soap opera, virtually every scene in Driven crashes into the wall.

That’s one of the film’s amazingly unbearable traits, in fact – it’s not that the movie is one big formulaic cruise control ride, but even every scene follows its own hackneyed arc. Not only do you know where the entire movie is going, you can predict how each scene will conclude from their outsets. Stallone has scripted what is essentially a retread blueprint of so many other films of this already basic genre. Given its juvenile simplicity, having the screenwriter’s nom de plume be “Sly” ends up being a cruel oxymoron.

“So what,” you may ask, “I’m not expecting Shakespeare. I just want some kickin’ racing action.” Well we certainly get that, I’ll readily admit. Although director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger) goes too far in the extravagance of the many crashes he stages, even the cruelest critic has to confess that Driven may very well have the coolest racing sequences in history (or at the very least in memory). That said, the extreme lack of plausibility within the narrative context of these races is what does the movie in. Even when it’s cool, it’s stupid.

I don’t know if the plot is superfluous in and of itself, but given its rank derivativeness you can basically say that it is. Sly is the old vet called out of forced retirement to help his old boss (a wheelchair-ridden racing guru -- come on) train a new racing hotshot, a naïve but good kid who can’t handle the burdens of instant success. There’s the evil-with-a-foreign-accent reigning champion with an apparent heart of ice the hotshot must contend with, his micro-managing brother is relentlessly controlling, and the craze of the business has caused him to lose focus of the pure love of racing. Egad, how trite does that all sound?

Sly’s Joe Tanto, of course, has still got it, as is proven with his “quarter pick-up” exhibition (and many countless displays after that). Yeah, it helps establish him as “the man”, and for a base action hero that’s all well and good. But it also makes you think, “Then why the heck isn’t this guy racing and ruling the circuit right now as he apparently is still able to do?” The movie never adequately answers that question (dear Lord, does it even attempt to?); it’s comfortable enough with making Sly look like a stud and leaving it at that.

As with so many brainless action movies, the relationship dynamics work on a very infantile level, as if the real world is nothing more than high school magnified. The love triangle between the good up-and-comer, his cold archrival champion, and said champ’s supermodel girlfriend has all the maturity of an episode of MTV’s Undressed. Tempers flare, tears are shed, and hearts are broken, all in such a ridiculously adolescent manner. Sly’s love interest ain’t much better either. He’s tagged with an “investigative reporter” who’s assigned to follow him everywhere he goes. Fortunately she’s sexy in an All-American sort of way, and in no time at all its like they’re out on one never-ending date. Again, it’s stupid.

For a movie that’s all about guts and machismo, Driven ends up chickening out big-time. About halfway through even its bad guy becomes good, a turn that would’ve worked in a better, deeper film but only comes off as weak here. This “complication” leads to a truly preposterous sequence where the jilted young hotshot goes racing through downtown Chicago in a racecar, “forcing” Sly to go after him in his. The extended chase is not merely ludicrous in concept, but the lengthy execution of it doesn’t bring one accident (all other vehicles brake safely into quick but harmless skids).

On top of that, only a faint reference to police pursuit is proffered, but that never goes anywhere (not even any post chase legal problems, of which there most certainly would be some). It just ends, Sly and the hotshot initially have it out, then Sly throws out some extremely passé’ pearls of experience-laden ”wisdom”, and everyone grows from the experience.

Following this young hotshot’s “challenge of character” is a professional race that actually tests it. In another absurdly inauthentic sequence, not only does the hotshot pass the character test but the formerly evil archrival champion does too. They save the day, affirming “we’re good” nods are passed, and it all feels like the end. But it isn’t.

Despite the film’s theme of “you can’t count victories in wins and losses”, Driven is compelled to end with deciding who indeed is the win/loss champion of the racing world. It’s bad enough that the photo finish you’re expecting happens and the result is just as you’d assume, but making matters worse is that the hotshot must come from starting the race in the final position to do so. He's blessed with multiple car pile-ups and crashes that helps him to move up to 2nd position by default, and before it’s all said and done Sly’s Joe Tanto even gets to prove in the final lap that he can still beat anybody if he really wants to. Talk about cheeseball!

Man, and I haven’t even mentioned the insipid subplot of Sly’s skanky ex-wife Gina Gershon, the fact that the hotshot and the rival are the only guys who ever win races, the stupid little humming that Sly does while driving that essentially makes him unstoppable, or the relentless pounding of the film’s non-stop deafening soundtrack. All that said, I’m still probably forgetting some of the film’s most asinine offenses.

Capping this mess off is a conclusion where each person gets what they were gunning for, more healing “we’re good” nods are exchanged, and everybody – I mean everybody – leaves happy (as the corny and long final celebratory montage that cuts back-and-forth, back-and-forth, between everyone smiling, laughing, and partying tells us). It’s not just the presence of has-been screen icons Sylvester Stallone and Burt Reynolds that makes Driven seem antiquated, it’s every livin’ breathin’ banal moment of the bloody outdated thing.


Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older