Driving Force

I was looking for an action packed movie...with trucks! And, I got that, kind of. The movie seems to fall flat in the development of the characters and their relationships, and the movies feels flat. Sam Jones and Catherine Bach are good enough. Don Swayze is not too bad as a bad guy.

Movie is far from a waste of time, but not something I would probably watch again.

DRIVING FORCE - aka ROADWARS - is a typical MAD MAX rip-off, made on the cheap with little in the way of excitement or danger to recommend it. Instead it has cheesy action scenes in which the actors seem to move in the slowest way imaginable, and random interludes where it doesn't even look like a post-apocalyptic world at all. Sam J. Jones gives his usual wooden turn as the hero, counterparted by Don Swayze hamming it up as the baddie, and I spotted Billy Blanks in a small role too.

Love the low budget charm to this simple but complex premise of a movie. Never heard of it until I seen it but I'm glad I've seen it it's almost got a cheap mad Max feel to it. The acting isn't the best but the actors suit there roles it's a good film with a good idea but it's just a good enough film to watch it's not so bad it's funny it's a good movie if your bored and are looking for something new to kill your time with I've seen lots of horrible low budget films but I could put up with this one ! Maybe it's because I've always been a fan of vehicle oriented films (*6) out of (*10)

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the film on Academy video cassette.

"Driving Force" is a contrived action pic that fails to whip up the populist sentiment of '70s truck driving man features.

Direct-to-video pic was shot in the Philippines by Aussie filmmakers, with several supporting players dubbed with an American accent. Its foreign origins are betrayed when an all-American girl calls the bad guys "bikies", Australian slang instead of the U. S. term biker for motorcycle types.

Sam J. Jones gets a job driving a tow truck to earn a living and keep custody of his daughter; his wife died and the grandparents want hr4. Unscrupulous fellow tow truckers led by evil Don Swayze are causing accidents and strong-arming innocent folks to drum up business. When Jones interferes, a boring vendetta begins.

Film founders due to a series of idiotic, almost impossible coincidences in the final reels, all designed to pile tsouris on Jones until he gets mad and gets even.

Jones is okay in this standard issue role, with Catherine Bach adding some glamor as his girlfriend (she's also convincing in the action scenes). Swayze, Patrick's near lookalike brother, goes through the motions as the cardboard villain.

Thank God this film has all but vanished now, because it's a complete waste of space. I was expecting a lot of cool vehicular action after seeing the trailer on the internet, but while the film delivers that kind of action, it is bogged down too much with the soap opera stuff with Sam Jones (FLASH GORDON) trying to prevent his rich in-laws from getting custody of his daughter, or the stuff with Jones trying to win Catherine Bach's heart.

Don Swayze, brother of Patrick, is okay as a bad guy but he really needed a better movie to display his talents in. DRIVING FORCE is a complete stinker, through and through. Avoid.