5.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A young hot shot driver is in the middle of a championship season and is coming apart at the seams. A former champion is called in to give him guidance.
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger, Gina GershonSport | 100% |
Melodrama | 16% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Digital copy
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After their first successful pairing in 1993's Cliffhanger, star Sylvester Stallone and director Renny Harlin reteamed for Driven, which was originally planned to be set in the world of Formula 1 racing. Stallone had been trying for years to obtain authorization for a bio-pic of Brazilian Formula 1 racing legend Ayrton Senna, whose story was ultimately told in his own words in the first-rate documentary Senna. By the time Stallone and Harlin combined their efforts, they had discovered that Formula 1 teams were too secretive to allow a film production the kind of access that Harlin wanted. The film's milieu was switched to the parallel world of what is now known as "Champ Car" racing but was then called "CART". Stallone took an existing screen story and transformed it into a magnum opus of a screenplay, creating a lead role for himself and an extended web of relationships around him. After Harlin shot it all, the rough cut ran four and a half hours. Harlin, who had only just begun to rehabilitate his reputation after the debacle of Cutthroat Island, wasn't about to let Stallone's vision stand in his way. In the editing room, he reshaped the film into what he thought would play best, and that meant shifting Stallone's character to the sidelines and focusing on the rivalry between two young drivers, neither of them played by a familiar face, and their romantic triangle with a newcomer, Estella Warren, who was promising but hardly a major discovery. As he has so often done, Harlin counted on his shots, his editors and special effects to carry the day. The result? A box office bomb, even in the overseas market where Stallone's films generally did well; lousy reviews, including one from auto enthusiast Jay Leno, guest hosting on Ebert and Roeper at the Movies, who pronounced Driven the worst car film ever made; seven Razzie nominations; and worst of all, rejection in the motorsport media, which immediately rechristened the film "Drivel". Stallone eventually told reporters that he wished he hadn't made the film.
Whatever issues one might have with Driven as a film, there shouldn't be any complaints about Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray's reproduction of cinematographer Mauro Fiore's (Avatar) colorful imagery. Director Harlin wanted to capture the excitement and pageantry of the sport, and wherever possible he took his cast and crew to actual racing events to film scenes with real drivers, crew and crowds in the background. For the race car scenes themselves, the effects team sorted through hours of footage to find material that they could adapt digitally to their needs by adding cars, recoloring existing cars and otherwise remaking the scene to conform to the story points. The result is an image that is consistently sharp, detailed and colorful, with primaries dominating the scene, especially reds and blues. Blacks are deep and solid for indoor and night scenes, and there is no indication that the sharpness has been engineered through artificial means. The grain is fine with a natural-looking pattern and no apparent video noise. Indeed, the clarity of the image sometimes works against the film, because certain CG effects, which already looked questionable at the time of the film's release (e.g., the driver POV shots) now look truly dated. Warner has appropriately given the film a BD-50 and a healthy average bitrate of 28.97 Mbps, which the plethora of action demands.
I have read that, for people who know engines, the sounds used for the CART racing machines in Driven are frequently wrong. Since I do not know engines, I can simply report that the lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is immersive and powerful, with wide dynamic range and deep bass extension. As much as the various camera tricks invented for the film, the sound mix is intended to give the viewer the sensation of sitting in the driver's seat and, on occasion, of being caught up in a collision. Crowd noise, sounds of pit crews at work and general hubbub are all part of the mix. In quieter scenes away from the manic activity of the racetrack, the mix provides a general sense of ambiance and atmosphere. The joyride through downtown Chicago has multiple sound effects as the whizzing race cars wreak havoc on the urban environment. In his commentary, Harlin takes great pride in his extensive musical selections, which include songs by LeAnn Rimes, Fatboy Slim, Grand Theft Auto and the Ohio Players, among others. What little additional music was needed is credited to BT, who that same year also scored the original The Fast and the Furious.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2001 DVD of Driven.
Harlin made a classic mistake in Driven, and he made it several times. If you're going to tinker with a familiar icon, you'd better have the courage of your convictions and go all the way. If you're going to cast Sylvester Stallone, but not make a typical Stallone film, then really do something different (as James Mangold did in 1997's Cop Land ). Don't put Stallone in the film, then sideline him in favor of younger players who are much less interesting. If you're going to make a Formula 1 racing film, then do it for real, working within whatever limitations the sport imposes. Otherwise, make a different racing film, but above all do not make a Formula 1 film in CART drag. Audiences may cut a filmmaker slack for trying something different, but they won't forgive a bait-and-switch. Driven is diverting and harmless enough, but it's junk. The Blu-ray's technical merits are solid, if you're interested, and the extras provide an intriguing opportunity to consider the film-that-might-have-been. But unless you're intrigued by that kind of speculative pursuit, I can't recommend the film.
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