Driven

DRIVEN

Rating: C

Film historians have long complained about certain milestones in filmmaking history which they feel precipitated a sharp decline in the quality of movies. For some, it was the introduction of color film. Others steadfastly maintain that films were never as good after the introduction of sound (I'm not kidding about this). For me, the big plunge came with the influence of music videos. Somewhere along the line, fast cuts came to substitute for effective editing, and meaningless, hyperactive camera pans and swoops came to substitute for camera movement that enhanced the power of a scene. Maybe this style-over-substance approach works when you're peddling CDs to a twelve-year-old target audience, but it sure as hell makes for some awful feature films.

Which is what Driven is: a two-hour-long music video. And a bad one, at that. Director Renny Harlin, who once showed considerable promise (Die Hard 2), is completely lost at sea here. Imagine if someone were stupid enough to try to make an entire movie in the style of the opening fifteen minutes of Any Given Sunday. Well, Harlin is that stupid. From the opening gun, the audience is bombarded with one meaningless shot after another. Camera pans which end on nothing. Trucking shots around characters which distract from the dialogue rather than adding to it. Instead of offering the audience excitement through an engrossing story and well-conceived action sequences, Harlin tries to fake the excitement with flash cuts and constant camera movement. The result is a very tedious movie.

If you bother to follow what little story there is, you'll find it's about a young, hotshot racecar driver (Kip Pardue) who's trying to dethrone the reigning formula-one champion (Til Schweiger) while struggling to cope with his newfound fame. Washed-up driver Sylvester Stallone (who chivalrously shoulders the blame for penning this mess) is called back up to the major leagues by team owner Burt Reynolds to act as Pardue's mentor. Reynolds is confined to a wheelchair for the role, and spends the entire movie pretending he cannot walk. Unfortunately, he also spends the entire movie pretending he cannot act. Stallone's role is actually more or less a supporting one, which is good, since he performs all his scenes with an "I've seen it all before, and I'm really only doing this part for the money anyway" smirk on his face. Unfortunately, his supporting status is also bad, since it places Pardue and Schweiger in the lead roles, and their combined charisma ranks somewhere below that of your average tax attorney.

The women fare even worse. Former Canadian synchronized swimmer Estella Warren starts out as Schweiger's girlfriend, then becomes Pardue's, but I doubt anyone in the audience ever cares one way or the other. Her best moments come when Harlin allows her to display some of her aquatic prowess in the swimming pool. Gina Gershon is on hand as Stallone's catty ex-wife, who's now the girlfriend of another driver on the team. None of which matters, since the subplot goes absolutely nowhere. Nor does Stallone's romancing of the female journalist (Stacy Edwards) who tags along for the sake of the story she's gathering. The women in this film are just window dressing. But then again, so are the men. The real stars of this film are the car crashes.

When Pardue leaves a party, steals a racecar and goes recklessly careening through the streets of Chicago, you're bound to think, "This scene is ridiculous." Then when Stallone heroically steals another racecar and takes off in hot pursuit (obviously reasoning that two wild maniacs blazing through the streets at 200 mph is safer than one), you'll likely mutter, "This has to be the stupidest sequence ever committed to film." But don't despair, because there's a later scene during a race which is so utterly moronic it makes the street chase seem like Shakespeare. With a story this shabby, it's no wonder Harlin does everything he can to distract us from it. If you get too bored, see who among you and your friends can count the most product placements.