IN Driven, Sylvester Stallone plays another expert brought out of retirement, in his case a top-notch racing driver who quit the game after a near fatal accident.

The object of his attention is young driver Jimmy Bly, played by Kip Pardue, a rookie driver who is heading for the championship but beginning to lose his form.

Another veteran actor Burt Reynolds turns up here as the car owner Carl Henry who has been expecting great things of his driver. It is he who turns to Stallone, the ex-driver with the usual troubled past.

The competition comes in the shape of a Schumacher-type known as Beau Brandenburg (!) and played by Til Schwiger in suitably Germanic, arrogant fashion.

Oh, and of course there has to be some female interest supplied here by the former girlfriend of his rival.

Throw in a promoter brother (Robert Sean Leonard) who drives Pardue to the limit and you have all the essential elements in place. Just don't expect any surprises.

What director Renny Harlin does give us, however, is a lot of edge-of-the-seat car racing scenes with crashes aplenty, smoking tyres and sweating drivers under the helmets. While there are some good stunts much has been created by the special effects department. Still good stuff but not as heartstopping as the real thing.

Stallone apparently resurrected his career with this movie in the USA and it is easy to understand why: he's in good (for him) form as the veteran driver and the movie charges along at times as fast as the cars whirling around the tracks.