DRIVEN – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

There are a few good reasons to see Nick Hamm’s Driven, (releasing August 16th on Digital and VOD) and four of them can be discerned rather quickly: Jason Sudekis, Lee Pace, Judy Greer and Corey Stoll. In the pantheon of good casting this year, Driven is the one to beat. A few hard-working, excellent, character actors can elevate even the most cliche material and Driven is one such case. 

    Driven follows the true story of Jim Hoffman (Jason Sudekis) who through a series of unfortunate events ended up as an informant for the F.B.I, a close confidant of John Delorean (Lee Pace) as the Delorean brand flamed out, and a major witness in the case against Delorean. There’s parties, sex, drugs, marital problems, male angst, bromance and lots of 80’s fashion. 

    If this sounds like your regular cut and dry “true story” crime film, you’d be right. Driven doesn’t aspire to be much more than a middle brow, well oiled machine of a movie. It does aspire to be the best middle brow, well oiled machine of a movie and it just about gets there. 

    The cast makes a big difference. As mentioned at the top, the people in this are some of the best working character actors today. Sudekis has always been an underappreciated player when it comes to drama, Pace is one of the most charismatic leading men that the business has, Greer plays the thankless wife role with at least a little bit of nuance and Corey Stoll…well Corey Stoll should be in every movie. 

    However, all of this work can’t quite outrun just how substandard much of the production aspects are. As much as the cast can pretend it’s the 80’s, the cliched visual signifiers that the lighting and the production design fall onto don’t do anything to make the film feel lived in. Everything looks a little too slick, beautiful, and colorful and while the pastiche is an excellent representation of what the 80’s have been sold to us as, the effect is middling at best.

    The story of John Delorean’s cocaine days is one that has probably inspired many other crime films and it shows. Now that somebody has made a movie about it, the truth can’t help but feel like a cliche, even if the cast is good enough to elevate the material. With a little bit of creativity lent to visual design, Driven could have matched its players. Without this, it’s a halfway decent, if never exemplary flick.