Driven

Driven is very gay. It's a movie about sweaty gay men who are afraid to say "I love you," so instead walk around with their shirts off, scowling a lot and racing cars. It's as gay as Harvey Fierstein and gayer than hosting an Ally McBeal party.

It's about time that Hollywood made a gay mainstream movie. I'm really fucking sick of gays being the bitchy friends of supermodels with love problems. They always seem to have lost their dicks and any interest in getting some tail for themselves. And the independent movies show gays as white-ass, skinny and awkward European teenagers who "come of age" with a best friend in what is supposed to be a trembly revelation. Those fucking independents are so God damn pleased with themselves for showing gay people kissing they don't even bother making their stories or their characters worth a piss in a Squirt bottle.

But Driven is gay, as gay as Top Gun or Male Gangbang Orgy 8. It celebrates manliness, it celebrates not being afraid to be so manly that only other men could love you. It's about wanting to be around other sweaty, gay men and stroking each other's glistening cocks. Of course, since this is Hollywood, they don't actually show cocks; they use glistening, throbbing race cars. And instead of showing these sweaty gay men fucking and sucking, Driven uses the track as an allusion. It's fast, it's pounding, it's slippery and sometimes sloppy, but these men love it and they keep coming back for more. Why? Because they're gay.

I say hats off to Sylvester Stallone for having the guts to make this movie. I didn't think he'd be the one to finally make a mainstream gay flick, but he is. And the only problem is that it sucks. Hard. It sucks dredge, piss, shit and that black sludge you find in old drain pipes. After all that, Driven still has the sucking power to gulp down your pets asses and the shit behind your sofa, and finally, it sucks wind. This is shit so mindless that you have to keep doubling back and asking yourself, was that as obvious and stupid as I thought it was? The answer is yes.

Some bad gay actor named Kip Pardue is a hotshot young race car driver who loves current racing champion, and very gay German, Til Schweiger. But, because they compete against each other, he can't profess his love, throw him down and roll around on the asphalt. Instead, he pour his passion onto the street, racing hard against Schweiger in order to prove himself worthy. Pardue races for a handicapped, gay Svengali-like owner played by Burt Reynolds. Reynolds is fully content to chew scenery when he can't suck young men's dicks. He doesn't care that Pardue's in love; he just wants to win and see more sweaty gay men, to hell with the rookie's heart!

As the story goes, Kip loses his edge, and his hope for being champ is slipping away. He fears that not winning will ruin his dream of being with Schweiger. And Reynolds won't get the big phallic trophy he so badly wants to sodomize himself with. So, Reynolds brings back his old gay lover, Sylvester Stallone, supposedly washed up, to help Kip win it all. Being terrifically gay, Stallone understands Pardue's love for the German and he wants to show him how to get on top, both figuratively and literally.

Because they can't embrace each other, the racers pass their fiery passion through a somewhat retarded girl played by somewhat retarded actress, Estella Warren. When Pardue can't kiss Schweiger, he kisses Warren, then Schweiger kisses her. This poor simple-minded girl is passed between them, unaware that she's just the carrier pigeon for their love notes (and cold sores). For the benefit of the audience, though, the movie finds an improbable way to get the two lovers to cavort in their leathers in a pond.

After much preening and strutting like peacocks, Pardue and Schweiger end up where sports movies always do, with one big contest deciding it all. I won't spoil it for you by telling you that Pardue wins the race and Schweiger's heart, all with Stallone's help. But the real climax is a surprisingly subtle one. Rather than show the boys hug, the movie has them shake huge, phallic bottles of champagne and ejaculate all over each other. Ahh, young love.

While the gay content is refreshingly blunt and straightforward, it just doesn't make Driven worth seeing. The script was mauled by Stallone. Not a scene goes by where everything isn't explained to us three times. First we see it, then the characters explain it, and then the track announcers explain it in terms that would insult a three-year-old. "Welcome to Germany, home of beer and the Autobahn!" "Joe Tanto is having car trouble! Car trouble is bad! You can't win a race if your car blows up! You, the audience, should be worried about Joe Tanto!" You know a movie's gonna be shit when the track announcer has the most lines. At the very least, give the guy some personality. Well, fuck, give anyone some personality.

These are cardboard cutouts and the gay community deserves better. They deserve to be represented by men who have more depth than the cum pool on the floor of the triple-X arcade. I can't think of one reason to give a fuck about Pardue. He's got the charisma of a dental drill, and the slow, sleepy delivery of a man whose mom drank way too much while she was pregnant. Stallone is coasting, slurring his words and just sort of hanging around. He has a subplot about wanting to prove he can still race, but fuck if I can remember why we're supposed to care. I think his presence is supposed to be classy. Note to Hollywood executives: If you're a producer and your movie is so shitty that Stallone's presence makes it classier, you should be making Whoppers, not movies.

And while this movie is by gay men, about gay men, and for gay men to jerk off to, they could have at least tried to make the women interesting. Warren has pouty lips and swooshy hips, but there's a garage sale in her head and everything must go! The lone stab at making her more than a sack of flesh is by showing her doing water ballet in a hotel swimming pool. Stallone's ex-wife, played with sobering shittiness by Gina Gershon, is a wholly fabricated ballbreaker. She's nothing but bitchy whining and sour digs and in real life anyone this sour would have puckered herself to death long ago. Come on guys, surely the gay community thinks more of women than to make them either retarded or vicious.

The dialog is stiffer than the hot dicks the actors want to suck. There's something called "on the nose" and I'm not talking about where actors want to shoot their wads in porno movies. I'm talking about when a writer is so fucking stupid that he makes his characters come right out and say everything. Rather than show it through what isn't said, or through how a lie is told, Stallone has his characters spell out the plot like they're Wal-Mart greeters telling you how to get to the automotive department. "Go to this plot point, turn right next to the obligatory confrontation, then make a left at the big race."

Because Hollywood can't show dicks and asses, the money shots are of the race cars, thrusting, bumping, and ramming each other from behind. They've made a pretty big deal out of the special effects and racing scenes. They suck. I've seen better editing and action in Ukrainian amateur porn. There is lots of racing, all jump-cutted and narrated into tedium. And the transitions from real racing to computer-generated scenes are obvious and tacky. It's like switching between racing on ESPN and your Nintendo.

Two Fingers for Driven. One finger for the shitty movie, and a bonus finger for the courage to make something so gay.