Are You With Us?
Driven
By Ryan Mazie
April 26, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
With Fast Five (why can’t Hollywood continue their Ke$ha-fication of movie titles like Scre4m and simply title it Fa5t?) being released this weekend, Driven was the perfect film to reflect back upon, being released exactly ten years ago from this weekend. As a big fan of The Fast & the Furious series (even though it might be the laziest titled franchise ever), I was hoping Driven would be just as much fun with Stallone co-writing/starring and Renny Harlin directing. Well, hopes and actuality are two very different things.
NASCAR is one of the biggest American sports today, so how come Hollywood can’t make a decent racing movie to tap into that market? Well, based off of Driven, here is a checklist why.
Reason number one: Hollywood doesn’t know how to portray realistic driving. Sure, I can accept the fact that only in the movies can race car drivers flip through the air ten times and land on the ground safely at 100 miles per hour, but Driven’s driving is so off the charts (particularly a race scene through the streets of Chicago) that I am not sure if I should be amazed or laughing. The latter is what I ended up doing nine times out of ten.
Reason number two: Hollywood doesn’t realize that race car drivers have emotions. Stallone either frowns or smiles. Burt Reynolds (looking like a wax statue of himself) either cackles menacingly or sneers menacingly. Kip Pardue, who plays a racing prodigy under Stallone’s eye, either cheers with a trophy in his hand or looks frustrated at the paparazzi. And then the only way to tell Estella Warren’s emotion, the love interest, is by the various states of undress she is in (if that is an emotion). You see stone-hard serial killers with more facial expressions than these guys.
Reason number three: Hollywood doesn’t realize that cars do not need to be CGI. While I’m sure in 2001 the graphics were impressive, some of the race shots look like Hot Wheel replicas with the camera lens smeared in Vaseline – certainly not being with us today. I never understood the necessity of directors needing to CGI racecars instead of doing practical stunts, but I guess in Driven’s case, the CGI is needed since it would be physically impossible to do half of the tricks showcased.
Reason number four: Hollywood doesn’t realize that cars going around in a circle is not a plot. Case in point? If I tried to describe what Driven is about right now, I would have given the movie more thought than the screenwriters did.
Driven might have set the record for having the dullest trailer even though it has more car crashes than fingers I can count them with. Released over the last week of April (a time usually reserved for studio burn-off films before the big guns of summer come out), Driven snagged the top spot with only a $12.2 million opening weekend. While not too terrible for a car racing film, with a budget of $94 million, Warner Bros was lucky to have released gigantic franchise starters Harry Potter and Ocean’s 11 (and subsidiary New Line’s The Lord of the Rings) that winter after a very lackluster year. However, the attention was diverted from Driven by New Line’s $90 million Warren Beatty/Diane Keaton fiasco Town & Country which opened six spots down at barely $3M. Yikes!
Collapsing in half during its second lap, Driven had the benefit of strong summer weekdays to spin its wheels to a $32.7 million total ($46.3 million adjusted). With little help from overseas venues ($22 million), Driven continued Stallone’s losing streak. Looking like his career was heading into Jean-Claude Van Damme/Steven Seagal territory, it wasn’t until 2006 when he started brushing off old character favorites like Rocky and Rambo to reinvigorate his place in pop and film culture.
One of many problems with Driven is that while Stallone and Reynolds are supposed to act like mentors, they end up stealing the show. Obviously better actors than the young cast, it was like a nervous studio executive pressured the director to incorporate more footage of the older generation, giving the plot an uneven and pointless tone. Why focus on Stallone joking with Reynolds while the main action has nothing to do with them at all?
Driven’s cast reads off like a list of people who seemingly fell off the face of the Earth. Kip Pardue as the ingénue racer is utterly unconvincing that he can be a professional drive let alone have his Cinderella license. With parts in Remember the Titans and The Rules of Attraction, Pardue’s career went south as quickly as it started. His current credit on IMDb is the straight-to-DVD Hostel: Part III. Canadian hottie Estella Warren, who is very convincing as...well, a model, had some success after Driven, landing the lead female role in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes and then... Kangaroo Jack. Shooting her career in the foot for a second time, after that, Estella was not seen on the big screen again. Til Schweiger, trying to break into American theaters after being a huge star in Germany, playing the laughable villain, also didn’t get any traction from the role. Likewise, Chilean Cristian de la Fuente, who has TV gigs here and there, found no traction with American audiences (although I might be wrong about his “star” status after being cast on Dancing with the Stars six seasons ago).
I greatly enjoy most Renny Harlin films. Deep Blue Sea is one of the better creature features out there and Die Hard 2 is just awesome to begin with. However, I was recently shown Harlin’s action flick The Long Kiss Goodnight and it has made me an instant, enduring fan of his. Think of it as a female Jason Bourne film without the reality and more zingers (if you are reading this column, by the time you are finished, you MUST add this movie to your Netflix queue, you won’t regret it. Or better yet, buy it, for the multiple times you will re-watch it). If I have learned anything, it is that Harlin can direct any action sequence. And while the racing scenes are very jokey, quite a few are gripping and get your adrenaline pumping. The panoramic racer-vision is a unique idea (although shoddily executed) and the sweeping aerial shots add an exciting perspective. What I liked most about Harlin’s direction is that you can actually tell who is in what place during the race – not seeing just a bunch of blurry cars speed by. This made me more invested in the prolonged action sequences that surprisingly, rarely looked the same.
Coming off of the massive box office flops Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight (it shocks me that this film didn’t catch on) Harlin got redeemed by Hollywood with the profitable Deep Blue Sea. Unfortunately, the money-loser Driven seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for his mainstream career with his most recent movies being dumped completely (Mindhunters, 12 Rounds) or going straight-to-DVD (Cleaner).
With a more than able veteran cast and crew Driven ends up sputtering right out of the gate. Overly long at 116 minutes and with uneven tones, Driven has a loud roving engine, but is never shifted out of first gear.
Verdict: Not with us
3 out of 10