This attempt at creating an inner city version of The Usual Suspects, complete with its own ghetto Keyser Soze, flounders about in a Dead Sea of expository dialog and flashbacks before beaching itself upon a conclusion that doesn't make a lick of logical or dramatic sense. Writer/director Wayne Beach is so caught up in his own supposed cleverness that he forgets some basic elements of storytelling, resulting in a film that will bore the pants off you.
Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is the District Attorney for Los Angeles who also happens to be running for mayor. While being interviewed by Vanity Fair journalist Ty Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Cole is informed that his top gang prosecutor just shot a man. Norah Timmer (Jolene Blalock) says the guy was a stalker who broke into her house and raped her. Cole believes Norah, at least partly because the two of them are secretly lovers, until a man calling himself Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) walks into the police department with a completely different story. He says the dead man's name is Isaac Duperde (Mekhi Phifer) and that Isaac and Norah were lovers. Pinks spins a tale of Norah dragging Isaac deeper and deeper into well, it's never really clear why she does any of the things she does or why Isaac goes along or what it's all supposed to result in. Even after watching the mystery be revealed at the end, I still don't know why any of it actually happened.
The nonsensical scheme does involve a multi-million dollar real estate deal and a gang leader named Danny Luden that Cole is obsessed with convicting even though he's never seen Danny's face or knows who he is. The whole thing revolves around something that's going to happen at 5 AM and, believe it or not, the confusion over whether Norah is a white woman pretending to be black or a black woman who can pass for white. The whole thing wraps up in the extremely rare quintuple twist which is so empty, superficial and stupid that it demonstrates why only morons think they can slap 5 plot twists on the end of their film.
Slow Burn starts out violating the first rule of filmmaking and just goes on from there. The rule is "show, not tell" and this story is entirely built and carried out by characters telling other characters things. It has multiple narrators leading the audience through multiple flashbacks interrupted only by more conversations in the present. The main character in all the flashbacks is Isaac, but we're never shown or even told anything about what kind of man he's is or why we should care about him. Ford Cole is the main character in the present, but he's so passive he might as well be a walking doormat. The secret agenda of Danny Luden is also so blatantly red flagged that even a blind and deaf person would notice it. And all Jolene Blalock does in this movie is briefly show off both her boobs and how bad her hair looks in corn rows.
Slow Burn is a movie where people you don't care about tell stories about other people you don't care about until springing a surprise ending you still don't care about. Unless you're a big Star Trek geek and want to see T'Pol's hooters, there's no reason to waste your time with this film.
Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is the District Attorney for Los Angeles who also happens to be running for mayor. While being interviewed by Vanity Fair journalist Ty Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Cole is informed that his top gang prosecutor just shot a man. Norah Timmer (Jolene Blalock) says the guy was a stalker who broke into her house and raped her. Cole believes Norah, at least partly because the two of them are secretly lovers, until a man calling himself Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) walks into the police department with a completely different story. He says the dead man's name is Isaac Duperde (Mekhi Phifer) and that Isaac and Norah were lovers. Pinks spins a tale of Norah dragging Isaac deeper and deeper into well, it's never really clear why she does any of the things she does or why Isaac goes along or what it's all supposed to result in. Even after watching the mystery be revealed at the end, I still don't know why any of it actually happened.
The nonsensical scheme does involve a multi-million dollar real estate deal and a gang leader named Danny Luden that Cole is obsessed with convicting even though he's never seen Danny's face or knows who he is. The whole thing revolves around something that's going to happen at 5 AM and, believe it or not, the confusion over whether Norah is a white woman pretending to be black or a black woman who can pass for white. The whole thing wraps up in the extremely rare quintuple twist which is so empty, superficial and stupid that it demonstrates why only morons think they can slap 5 plot twists on the end of their film.
Slow Burn starts out violating the first rule of filmmaking and just goes on from there. The rule is "show, not tell" and this story is entirely built and carried out by characters telling other characters things. It has multiple narrators leading the audience through multiple flashbacks interrupted only by more conversations in the present. The main character in all the flashbacks is Isaac, but we're never shown or even told anything about what kind of man he's is or why we should care about him. Ford Cole is the main character in the present, but he's so passive he might as well be a walking doormat. The secret agenda of Danny Luden is also so blatantly red flagged that even a blind and deaf person would notice it. And all Jolene Blalock does in this movie is briefly show off both her boobs and how bad her hair looks in corn rows.
Slow Burn is a movie where people you don't care about tell stories about other people you don't care about until springing a surprise ending you still don't care about. Unless you're a big Star Trek geek and want to see T'Pol's hooters, there's no reason to waste your time with this film.