Driven (2001)

A young hot shot driver is in the middle of a championship season and is coming apart at the seams. A former CART champion is called in to give him guidance.

Director:

Renny Harlin

Writers:

Jan Skrentny (story), Neal Tabachnick (story)

Stars:

Sylvester Stallone, Kip Pardue, Til Schweiger

1 win & 10 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Sylvester Stallone	...	Joe Tanto
Burt Reynolds	...	Carl Henry
Kip Pardue	...	Jimmy Bly
Stacy Edwards	...	Lucretia Clan
Til Schweiger	...	Beau Brandenburg
Gina Gershon	...	Cathy Heguy
Estella Warren	...	Sophia Simone
Cristián de la Fuente	...	Memo Heguy
Brent Briscoe	...	Crusher
Robert Sean Leonard	...	Demille Bly
Verona Pooth	...	Nina (as Verona Feldbusch)
Jasmin Wagner	...	Ingrid (as Jasmine Wagner)
Chip Ganassi	...	Team Owner
John Della Penna	...	Team Manager
Dan Duran	...	Commentator #1

Storyline

Talented rookie race-car driver Jimmy Bly has started losing his focus and begins to slip in the race rankings. It's no wonder, with the immense pressure being shoveled on him by his overly ambitious promoter brother as well as Bly's romance with his arch rival's girlfriend Sophia. With much riding on Bly, car owner Carl Henry brings former racing star Joe Tanto on board to help Bly. To drive Bly back to the top of the rankings, Tanto must first deal with the emotional scars left over from a tragic racing accident which nearly took his life.

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Plot Keywords:

rookie | skirt flying | legs | car racing | movie flop | 

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Taglines:

Welcome to The Human Race

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Genres:

Action | Drama | Sport

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for language and some intense crash sequences

Did You Know?

Trivia

Sylvester Stallone was asked in an interview about films he would wish had not done, and he listed this as one of them.

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Goofs

During the race in Germany (the one with the rain) it is sunny in several shoots, although it is apparently "raining" and streets are "wet".

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Quotes

Joe Tanto: Hey Beau, If this is about Pride, You'd better forget it, Cuz thats how this whole thing started.
Beau Brandenburg: What would you do?
Joe Tanto: Me? to get someone back that I really loved? To get that rock out of my stomach? I'd Crawl.
Beau Brandenburg: You'd Crawl?
Joe Tanto: Crawl!
Beau Brandenburg: Joe you never crawl.
Joe Tanto: Yeah, I'd crawl until there was nothing left, C'Mon Champ Use your head.

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Alternate Versions

In the original version of the film when Memo Heguy's (de la Fuente) car wrecks and is thrown upside down in the river, Joe Tanto (Stallone) jumped into the river with Jimmy Bly (Pardue) to save him. Beau Brandenburg (Schweiger) was not involved in this scene at all originally. But director Renny Harlin thought that it made the Beau Brandenburg character look totally heartless. So Stallone rewrote the scene taking his character Joe Tanto out of it completely. He instead put his character in the pits the entire time. The scene was partly reshot in a similar location in California, instead of returning to Germany where the original scene was filmed. Stallone wrote that the Brandenburg character turns his car around and helps save Memo from drowning. Parts of the original scene featuring Joe Tanto, were for the most part not reshot. Digital Effects company Pixel Magic digitally erased Tanto out of the scene. Aside from this scene, other scenes involving Beau Brandenburg were rewritten during filming to make his character more likable and misunderstood. Some of these scenes include the ending of the film and a scene where Brandenburg denies a female fan a kiss.

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Connections

Featured in HBO First Look: Driven (2001)

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Soundtracks

Hey Man Nice Shot
Performed by Filter
Written by Richard Patrick
Courtesy of Reprise Records
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

"Riven" would be better!

Utter and complete tripe - a film that is without any credibility, if for no other reason that it had the absolute temerity to think it could upstage Frankenheimer's 1966 masterpiece GRAND PRIX, on which it is so loosely yet obviously, based! Working on the assumption that 90% of viewers would never have seen (let alone heard of) GRAND PRIX, Stallone wrote himself a ROCKY on the racetrack.

Cornball script, z-grade fx....well thats to be expected, the Formula 1 people were never going to allow a loser like Harlin and his production flunkies anywhere near near the real thing, unlike the latitude extended to John Frankenheimer during GRAND PRIX's filming in 1965.

Look, I'm not even wasting more words on this affront to cinematic good taste. If you liked THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS you might be suitably underwhelmed by this crap!

Details

Official Sites:

film.ru (russian) [Russia]

Country:

USA Canada Australia

Language:

English German Spanish

Release Date:

27 April 2001 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ruutulippu

Filming Locations:

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$94,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$12,174,504, 29 April 2001

Gross USA:

$32,720,065

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$54,744,738

Company Credits

Production Co:

Franchise Pictures, Epsilon Motion Pictures, Trackform Film Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

116 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1