In "Driven," Sylvester Stallone stars as a retired race car driver hired by race team owner Burt Reynolds to snap into shape his top young hot-shot champion, who's losing his focus. In return, Stallone gets to race again, but as a second banana teammate.
Stallone produced, wrote and stars in the film, yet he was kind enough this time to let Renny Harlin direct.
But in "Driven" no favors were done for anyone involved in this, at best, B-action flick with cheap special effects.
How cheap, you ask? Well, even though there are enough different car crashes to make you spin out of control in your seat, the flying debris looks as if it was painted with colored markers.
If that's not enough to clue you in to just how shallow this film is, then try this:
Even though Stallone is supposed to be a down-and-out, over-the-hill racer, he finds himself acting soooo cool it almost scares him.
He is a know-it-all, fix-it-all, been-there / done-that, and I-know-every-gorgeous-woman-loves-me-and-wants-me-right-now kind of guy. Oh, yeah, at the same time very humble.
So for except a few halfway decent action race and crash scenes, "Driven" is an uninteresting cliche-filled bore that suffers from very thick cardboard characters, unbelievable story, bad acting and lame directing.
The new title for this film should be "Driven Right into the Dumpster," with no pit stops.
"Driven" is rated PG-13.
