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Reviews Counted:33
Fresh:4
Rotten:29
Average Rating:3.7/10
Consensus: With wooden acting and hammy, overheated dialogue, Slow Burn isn't so much a noir as it is a mediocre parody of one.
Theatrical Release:Apr 13, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $1,181,197
Synopsis: In director/writer Wayne Beach's neo-noir thriller, SLOW BURN, various characters on both sides of the law collide in an unnamed city. District Attorney Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is campaigning to... [More]
Shelved for over a year, this incompetent mystery thriller stops periodically so some character or other can deliver an expository speech and pull the plot back on track, but by the end the story has turned into a hair ball.
Top CriticA slow death.
The screenplay is riddled with so many problems, clichés, cheats, and borrowed ideas that the movie never takes off on a story level.
Barely flickers as a far-fetched urban tale of chameleon-like characters.
...the story is intriguing enough to hold our interest through all the film noir pretensions...
When a movie has been sitting around since 2003, why wouldn't you just throw it at the DVD shelf rather than subjecting big-screen audiences to it?
A strange, sprained, but sprightly fusion of The Usual Suspects and the Tragic Mulatto, Slow Burn wants badly to turn its standard neo-noir into a nuanced racial chiaroscuro.
Top CriticEasy to understand why Slow Burn sat on the shelf for four years, but harder to understand why it didn't go straight to DVD or Showtime late night.
One wonders why Slow Burn wasn't just dumped completely.
Slow Burn tries to be smolder, but ultimately there's no heat.
The theme of racial confusion that attempts to underlie this would-be noirish murder mystery becomes just one more unintentionally hilarious aspect...
Deficiencies aside, Slow Burn is almost worth seeing.
If you have not figured out the identity of Luden by the finale, it will only be because you do not care.
Top CriticThe bigger problem is that for all the plot turns and reversals and flashes of action that Beach has structured into his film, there's an elusive extra something that's missing.
Top CriticJohn Grisham meets The Usual Suspects by way of late-night Cinemax in this derivative thriller.
Top CriticWriter-director Wayne Beach figures if you liked Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s big climactic reversal, you’ll love four of them in a row!
Nothing is what it seems -- unless it seems cheesy.
Top CriticA lesson in how not to make a multiple-viewpoint mystery.
Top CriticIts cavalcade of 'twists' in the last 20 minutes come off the conveyor belt so quickly and haphazardly that they all wind up in a big pile on the floor, waiting to be snorted at by incredulous viewers.
It's not a brilliant movie. It's certainly not worth canceling any appointments to catch at the theater. But it's more than worth a quick look on cable, or even an impulsive rental.
Top Critic
April 28, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review 
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April 15, 2007:
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April 12, 2007:
Critical Consensus: "Hoax" Shines; Force Is With "ATHF"; "Disturbia" Mixed; "Pathfinder," "Stranger" Not Perfect; "Redline," Slow Burn" Not Screened
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