Slow Burn is a wooden police thriller that is as dull as it is impenetrable and ultimately beyond ludicrous.
Slow Burn (2007)
Tomatometer
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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... 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 become mayor, but his assistant D.A. and lover, Nora Timmer (a sultry Jolene Blalock, best known for her stint on the STAR TREK series ENTERPRISE), finds herself implicated in the murder of a record-store employee (Mekhi Phifer), seriously jeopardizing her boss's bid. As evidence about the incident comes to light, other suspects surface, including the mysterious Luther Pinks (LL Cool J, born James Todd Smith), along with a determined reporter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), creating a complex web of deceit. Filmed in 2003 but not officially released until 2007, SLOW BURN may have best been showcased as a TV movie, but its considerable star power (Liotta, Smith, etc.) helps to elevate it above similar small-screen fare. Beach is a veteran screenwriter (with THE ART OF WAR and MURDER AT 1600, both starring Wesley Snipes, on his resume), Beach clearly knows how to set up a suspenseful mystery, and his impressive cast (which includes always-outstanding character actors Ejiofor and Bruce McGill) gamely follows his twists and turns. Although the movie is heavily indebted to THE USUAL SUSPECTS it stands on its own as a decent, if convoluted, crime drama. [More]
Starring: Ray Liotta, Jolene Blalock, LL Cool J, Taye Diggs
Starring: Ray Liotta, Jolene Blalock, LL Cool J, Taye Diggs, Chjwetel Ejiofor, Mekhi Phifer, Bruce McGill, Robert Reynolds, Guy Torry
Director: Wayne Beach
Director: Wayne Beach
Screenwriter: Wayne Beach
Producer: Sidney Kimmel, Fisher Stevens, Bonnie Timmermann
Composer: Jeff Rona
Studio: Lions Gate Films
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Reviews for Slow Burn
The title is half-right: the picture moves at a glacial pace (which allows all its absurdities to stand in clear relief), but it generates no heat.
Teeming with lurid atmosphere, Slow Burn touches on mutual stalking, inner city gangsta capitalism, and detonation of a ghetto as part of a lucrative urban removal gentrification scheme concocted by the city elite.
Beach's storytelling tactics, much like the film as a whole, would simply be annoying if they weren't also borderline insulting.
No one and nothing can be taken at face value in Beach's twisty tale of secrets and lies, which buries its very interesting idea in a welter of ludicrous dialogue and skin-flick imagery.
As tiresome as it is beholden to a dozen (much better) crime stories.
The plot - at once convoluted and transparent - seems little more than a frame upon which a series of soft focus sex scenes might be hung.
[Director] Beach slams open the trap doors of false and real identity with such a frenzy that, even at the end, you're not sure who's who and what they did to whom. It's sloppy fun to watch while you're in the theater.
LL Cool J's ambition to make it sound as if he's "doin' it" with every syllable that comes out of his mouth works to campily put the fire out on the film's offensive pretense to race consciousness.
While Slow Burn does admittedly pick up towards the end - as the film morphs into a flat-out ripoff of The Usual Suspects - there's virtually nothing in the first hour that even comes close to holding the viewer's interest.
The millisecond its all over you’ll be wondering if the ink has dried on the court papers filed by Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie.
Latest News for Slow Burn
April 28, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review ![]()
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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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