In Driven, Sylvester Stallone plays a frumpy old Formula One racer instructed to mentor a talented young rookie who's hit a bad patch. It's fitting that Stallone must rope in an undisciplined young fella in this movie, because those young fuckers really get on my nerves, you know? They think they invented everything. Every generation thinks it invented everything--sex, rebellion, fashion.

Admittedly though, this whole Formula One racing craze must be a recent human development, because I just don't know where I stand with it. I define sport as either those who occupy the lower echelons of the social order beating the living Christ out of one another, or the interpretive reenactment of basic male fantasies. Given the opulent surroundings and the undoubtedly astronomical budget of this film, Formula One stands firmly in the latter category. Beer? Hot women? Fast cars? Bling-bling, baby. Oddly, though, Formula One only frustrates the male psyche, because it presents the beer, the ladies, and the hotrod, but does not allow the three to consummate their relationship. You're not allowed to race with the beer and the girls inside the car. Driven posits that there isn't a man among us who wouldn't liken the act of racing about, ripped, making hairpin turns with a collection of giggling Lolitas in the back seat, to stealing Jesus' parking spot in heaven. For this sport, this movie, to evoke such affections without providing gratification is criminal.

Anyway, the movie is bad. Not because I don't know where I stand with the sport it portrays, but because in style and content it owes far too heavy a debt to Baywatch. That said, it does have breathtaking races and brilliant crash scenes, which begs another question: Are Formula One's cheap seats up in the nosebleed section or down on the blood-stained bleachers where the red-hot shrapnel's a-flyin'? I hope I'll never know.