Driven (Wide Screen) > Reviews > DRIVEL!

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Hated it
Story	Very weak
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Weak
Soundtrack	Weak

Advantages:	You Can Switch It Off
Disadvantages:	Its Sad To See Stallone Sink Even Lower

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I came to be a proud owner of a copy of Driven through a joke £1 bid on ebay. There was a day left on the auction, surely I would be outbid. Surely. But no, my bid won, I couldn't believe it. Why would the seller even accept such a low bid, I didn't care, I'd got one over on him. Little did I realise he was probably laughing all the way to the bank with his shiny little pound.

I should have guessed something was up when no-one else put in a bid. They knew something I didn't. I had been looking forward to this film ever since Sylvester had started turning up in the paddock at every F1 meeting about 7 years ago. He was planning to make a movie about F1, applying the good old rocky formula, racer is coming to end of career, racer gets his chance, mean German/Brit/Scandinavian gets in his way, racer overcomes him as he overcomes his own personal demon and roll titles. Another Stallone triumph in the bag, surely.

Then I found out he'd had a wee row with the F1 people and couldn't get the rights to use F1 as the basis for the film. That Bernie Ecclestone doesn't know when he's on to a good thing, or maybe he foresaw that Sly was going to make a pile of rubbish and rightly distanced himself from this film. I wasn't sure. So I gave Sly the benefit of the doubt, I knew the film was now about Indy car, but it's just F1 for fat people so it wouldn't make a great deal of difference.

Confident I had got myself a right little bargain I sat down to watch this with a few mates. I had been watching for 30 minutes when I realised I had been well and truly ripped off. £1 is an extortionate price for this… this… monstrosity of a film. I just cannot believe that more than one person looked at the script and did not order it to be burned. I cannot beleive director Renny Harlin still had a career after this. I cannot believe that no one realised they had employed a plank of wood called Kip Pardue to take on the lead role. That's right, sly isn't the hero here. Well at least that is what I could gather from what I watched, because yes, I did something I have never done before, I turned it off, in absolute disgust.

What's that, I shouldn't be giving a review of a film I haven't watched fully? Maybe I shouldn't be. I can't tell you whether the DVD has any decent extras or not. I can't tell you whether the ending is a let down, but I am sure it is as I expected, not worth watching. But I can tell you this is the only film to rise such hatred from me that I couldn't stand to watch it. I know racing films are not a genre that you could exactly call successful but here the racing is done in such a way as to be an insult to anyone with even a basic knowledge of it. The dialogue is mind numbingly bad, the performances dire, it's so bad I would implore you to go out if it gets screened on TV. Do anything, just don't watch it.

I think it's fair to say I was left disappointed, lets leave it at that.

It's Like A Car Crash, Except You Don't Want To Look....