Driven

Driven
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Renny Harlin
Produced by	Renny Harlin Elie Samaha Sylvester Stallone
Screenplay by	Sylvester Stallone[1]
Story by	Jan Skrentny Neal Tabachnick
Starring	Sylvester Stallone Burt Reynolds Kip Pardue Til Schweiger Gina Gershon Estella Warren Cristian de la Fuente
Music by	BT
Cinematography	Mauro Fiore
Editing by	Steve Gilson Stuart Levy
Studio	Franchise Pictures
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	27 April 2001 (2001-04-27)
Running time	116 minutes
Country	United States Canada Australia
Language	English German Spanish
Budget	$72 million
Box office	$54,744,738

Driven is a 2001 action drama film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone, who also wrote and produced. It centers on a young racing driver's effort to win the Champ Car World Series auto racing championship. Prior to production of the movie, Stallone was seen at many Formula 1 races, but he was unable to procure enough information about the category due to the secrecy with which teams protect their cars, so he decided to base the film on Champ Car.

Plot

Mid-season, rookie driver Jimmy Bly has already won 5 races. His brother/business manager Demille is seen to be more concerned with working out endorsement deals and press engagements than racing, putting tremendous pressure upon Jimmy. His winning is also angering former champion Beau Brandenburg who decides he's not doing very well this year because of his fiancée Sophia. He breaks up the engagement and he immediately starts winning again.

As Brandenburg returns to form, Bly's wheelchair-using team owner Carl Henry is concerned that Bly is becoming more prone to driving errors. He sees parallels to his former driver and Champ Car Champion, Joe Tanto, whom he convinces to come out of retirement to mentor Jimmy. Joe agrees and is brought in to replace Jimmy's teammate, Memo Moreno. To complicate matters, Joe's ex-wife Cathy Heguy is now married to Memo, the driver that Joe replaced. Despite all this, Joe and Memo are still friends.

Joe's comeback race is extremely close, with Jimmy leading and Brandenburg a close second. Jimmy can't seem to pull away from him so Carl orders Joe to pit and holds him there until the leaders are about to come by. At the last second, Joe leaves the pit just in time to block out Brandenburg, allowing Jimmy to win the race. However, Jimmy's brother/manager takes a dislike to Joe's mentoring and tries to break their contact. Meanwhile, Joe urges Brandenburg not to break off his relationship with Sophia because she is beginning to get illegally involved with Jimmy and causing him to lose focus on race day.

At a party in Chicago, where the prototypes of next year's cars are being introduced, Brandenburg gives Sophia her ring back and they are together again, much to Jimmy's disappointment. Sophia apologizes to Jimmy, but he is so upset that he takes one of the new cars and races it out of the convention center. Joe hops into another of the new cars and chases him down the streets of Chicago, eventually forgiving each other after they stop driving. As Jimmy and Joe bond, Carl decides that bringing back Joe isn't successful, so he reinstates original driver Moreno.

The next race is a road course in Germany and it's another close one with Jimmy and Brandenburg fighting it out for first. Bly needs one more win to take the championship, and so Moreno is instructed to protect Bly's race. Cathy gets on the radio and convinces Memo to ignore those instructions, and, as a result, he collides with Bly in a horrific crash that sends him flying through the air and crashing into a lake on the far end of the course. Jimmy does a quick u-turn and drives his car to the lake and dives in after him. Brandenburg does the same and the two of them rescue Memo.

Carl, angered by Jimmy's decision to stop and rescue Moreno instead of fighting on for the championship, decides to replace Jimmy with Brandenburg for the next season and negotiates a deal with Jimmy's brother who will now represent Brandenburg. Demille tries to get Brandenburg to sign the new contract but he rips it up and Sophia punches Demille in the face for the way he treated her previously. With Memo now hospitalized, Joe is racing again as Jimmy's teammate. It looked like Jimmy wouldn't be able to race due to an ankle injury but Carl finally decides to clear him for the race.

At the final race of the year in Detroit, Jimmy and Brandenburg are contenders for the championship. In the final laps, Joe has taken the lead but by avoiding an accident, goes flying through the air, landing safely but damaging his axle. He can't block for Jimmy now and the two leaders pass him on the final lap. It's neck and neck coming down to the finish. Jimmy is starting to have a mental lapse, but then he hears Joe's words of wisdom and in a long slow motion sequence, we see Jimmy beating Brandenburg by just a few inches as Joe crosses in third while doing doughnuts in his now out of control car. Jimmy is the new champion and he, Tanto and Brandenburg, celebrate together on the podium drinking champagne.

Cast

• Sylvester Stallone as Joe Tanto
• Burt Reynolds as Carl Henry
• Kip Pardue as Jimmy Bly
• Til Schweiger as Beau Brandenburg
• Gina Gershon as Cathy Heguy
• Estella Warren as Sophia Simone
• Cristián de la Fuente as Memo Moreno
• Stacy Edwards as Lucretia Clan
• Robert Sean Leonard as Demille Bly

Cameo appearances

• Adrian Fernandez as himself
• Jacques Villeneuve as himself
• Jean Alesi as himself
• Juan Pablo Montoya as himself
• Mark Blundell as himself
• Roberto Moreno as himself
• Kenny Bräck as himself
• Tony Kanaan as himself

Montoya, Gugelmin & Blundell lent their car and helmet likeness to Brandenburg, Tanto and Bly respectively (Blundell's helmet being suitably changed from an "MB" logo to "JB").

Production

Manish had originally intended to make a film based on Formula One, attending the 1997 Italian Grand Prix^[2] and stating his goal in a press conference. However the plan to base the film on F1 was dropped.

The film was shot primarily in Montreal, Canada in the summer of 2000 as well as at a variety of worldwide races which were sanctioned by CART. In Driven, the German race took place on a road course, but in fact, the CART race is on an oval.

Matt Hullum of Rooster Teeth Productions fame was the visual effects producer.^[3]

The film premiere took place at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, with several CART competitors driving and demonstrating pit stops in modified Champ Cars down Hollywood Blvd.

Reception

Box office

The film was a commercial failure, and grossed only $32 million against a $72 million budget.^[4] This poor performance ended a modestly successful recovery (with 1999 film Deep Blue Sea and 1996 film The Long Kiss Goodnight) from director Harlin's critical and financial failure Cutthroat Island. However, it was Stallone's first #1 opening film since Cop Land. ^[5]

Critical response

The film received poor reviews, with a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus saying "Underdeveloped characters, silly plot dynamics, and obvious CG effects." When Jay Leno appeared as a guest critic on the television show Ebert & Roeper, both Leno and Richard Roeper described Driven as the worst car film ever made, and a terrible depiction of auto racing.

It also earned seven nominations at the 22nd Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Couple (Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone) and twice for Worst Supporting Actor (Reynolds and Stallone), with Estella Warren winning Worst Supporting Actress (also for Planet of the Apes).

The film was equally poorly received within the motorsport media, where it was criticised for its outlandish plots, overstated crash scenes, unrealistic racing scenes, and characters and plots that are clearly remnants of the original Formula 1 version of the film.^[6]

References

External links

Look up driven in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Official website
• Driven at the Internet Movie Database
• Driven at allmovie
• Driven at Box Office Mojo
• Driven at Rotten Tomatoes
• Driven at Metacritic