Driven (DVD, 2001)

Driven might be the worst racing movie you will ever see. The racing is inaccurate, the special effects are poor and the acting is worse. Sylvester Stallone plays a has-been driver called in to inspire Kip Pardue, who drives better than he acts. The plot is trite but serves as filler between the exaggerated racing. Burt Reynolds plays a curmudgeon owner who is sarcastic, bitter and manipulative. The racing is inaccurate; the cars switch from road course wings back to speedway wings during the same race. The crashes are embellished beyond the laws of physics. The CART (the racing series) cars run on methanol, a fuel that burns with a clear flame and is diluted in water. The movie shows a car flying through the air and landing in a pond, bursting into yellow and orange flames (gasoline). Another scene shows a tire flying off the car and flying into the stands. That scene has an obvious (poorly drawn) tire going in slow motion and the fans diving out of the way. This is in very poor taste because this happened in a "real" CART race and resulted in fatalities. An additional scene outside a Chicago hotel has the drivers jumping into cars (that magically don’t need starters as in real life) and racing like madmen, through the streets of the Windy City without helmets. I’ve been to over 40 CART races, and the most boring race was better than Driven. If you want to see Sylvester Stallone in a racing movie, buy Death Race 2000 (1976) - it's fake but at least it's entertaining.