Slow Burn (2007)

12% of critics liked it
(33 reviews)
57% of users liked it
(7,096 ratings)

A cop trying to clear the name of a woman he loves falls deep into a morass of corruption in this crime thriller. Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is the district attorney in a crime-ridden town where he's contemplating a run for mayor in a bid for greater power. Cole is also having an affair with one of his… More A cop trying to clear the name of a woman he loves falls deep into a morass of corruption in this crime thriller. Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is the district attorney in a crime-ridden town where he's contemplating a run for mayor in a bid for greater power. Cole is also having an affair with one of his assistants, Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), though he tries to keep that a secret. One evening, while Cole is chatting with journalist Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Timmer arrives with startling news -- she claims to have been sexually assaulted by Isaac Duparde (Mekhi Phifer), a clerk at a nearby music store who broke into her apartment. Making matters more complicated is the fact that Duparde is currently dead in her flat, leaving Cole to find a way to protect Timmer while not staining his own reputation. Cole realizes this may be harder than he imagined when Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) arrives on the scene to tell him that Timmer actually lured Duparde back to her apartment on purpose, in an effort to get information on a well-connected organized crime figure. Slow Burn was the first directorial effort from screenwriter Wayne Beach. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Play Trailer

Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 33 min.
Directed By: Wayne Beach
Written By: Wayne Beach
Genres: Mystery & Suspense, Drama

In Theaters: Apr 13, 2007 Wide
On DVD: Jul 24, 2007
Studio: Lions Gate Films

Critic Reviews

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
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.
Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly
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.
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press
If you have not figured out the identity of Luden by the finale, it will only be because you do not care.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
The 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.
Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
John Grisham meets The Usual Suspects by way of late-night Cinemax in this derivative thriller.
Kyle Smith, New York Post
Nothing is what it seems -- unless it seems cheesy.
Cynthia Fuchs, Common Sense Media
Sluggish thriller mixes flashbacks and deception.
Kam Williams, EURWeb
A slow death.
Prairie Miller, Long Island Press
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.
Kam Williams, NewsBlaze
A slow death.
David Cornelius, DVDTalk.com
The screenplay is riddled with so many problems, clichés, cheats, and borrowed ideas that the movie never takes off on a story level.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Barely flickers as a far-fetched urban tale of chameleon-like characters.
Jim Lane, Sacramento News & Review
...the story is intriguing enough to hold our interest through all the film noir pretensions...
Linda Cook, Quad City Times (Davenport, IA)
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?
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Easy 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.
Mark Dujsik, Mark Reviews Movies
One wonders why Slow Burn wasn't just dumped completely.
Frank Lovece, Film Journal International
Slow Burn tries to be smolder, but ultimately there's no heat.
MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher
The theme of racial confusion that attempts to underlie this would-be noirish murder mystery becomes just one more unintentionally hilarious aspect...
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul), St. Paul Pioneer Press
Deficiencies aside, Slow Burn is almost worth seeing.
Luke Y. Thompson, L.A. Weekly
Writer-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!

Read all 20 critic reviews

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

Dean !

A pretty decent crime thriller with a strong cast. Not a lot of action but I thought it was a good story with some decent plot twists. In some elements it is like the usual suspects in the way the story unfolds with quite a few red herrings along the way. An enjoyable film that seemed… More
A pretty decent crime thriller with a strong cast. Not a lot of action but I thought it was a good story with some decent plot twists. In some elements it is like the usual suspects in the way the story unfolds with quite a few red herrings along the way. An enjoyable film that seemed to slip under the radar.
Al S

A sizzeling, sexy and blistering crime thriller. Bursting with riveting and nail-biting twist and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat. The suspense snaps and crackels like live wire. Intelligent and satisfying. Smart, stylish and very compelling. It gets better as it rips… More
A sizzeling, sexy and blistering crime thriller. Bursting with riveting and nail-biting twist and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat. The suspense snaps and crackels like live wire. Intelligent and satisfying. Smart, stylish and very compelling. It gets better as it rips through the layers. An explosively well-written and hard-hitting drama. Gripping and heart-pounding entertainment. A great and exceptional all-star cast. Ray Liotta rips through the screen with yet another memerising performance. He never fails to give an awsome portrayel. James Todd Smith is gives a great and confident performance.
Walter M

[font=Century Gothic]In "Slow Burn," district attorney Ford Cole(Ray Liotta) is running for mayor on a record of being tough on organized crime with the help of his forceful assistant district attorney Nora Timmer(Jolene Blalock). But this has also earned him his share of… More
[font=Century Gothic]In "Slow Burn," district attorney Ford Cole(Ray Liotta) is running for mayor on a record of being tough on organized crime with the help of his forceful assistant district attorney Nora Timmer(Jolene Blalock). But this has also earned him his share of enemies, including the legendary gangster Danny Ludin who runs the Omen gang.(Ludin is so twisted that he has taped every episode of "Friends.") One night while riding with reporter Ty Trippin(Chiwetel Ejiofor), Ford receives word that Nora killed Isaac Duperde(Mekhi Phifer), a music store worker who met her a week before and raped her. But a friend and coworker of Isaac's, Luther Pinks(LL Cool J), contradicts her by saying that Isaac and Nora have been acquainted for months.(This does not mean that she was not raped...) As proof, he mentions a tattoo on Nora's backside that Ford is familiar with from their lovemaking...[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]"Slow Burn" is a stylish attempt to do a modern noir with an erotic edge(shown perfectly in Jolene Blalock's barefoot stride across the music store) that starts promisingly, but eventually ties itself into so many knots that it just becomes one huge mess. Still, despite the obvious cinematic references("The Usual Suspects" and "Rashomon" to name a couple), there are some interesting thoughts on the subject of race, especially with how differently Ford and Luther view Nora who has light brown skin. What would have helped is if the movie's timeframe had been extended from one night, so as to properly develop a potentially vibrant milieu.[/font]
Jeff B

A fascinating failure, this stylish and noirish Rashomon meets The Usual Suspects ultimately proves to be gunpowder in a thimble, more Who-Done-What? than Who-Done-It? Too dense for its running time, Slow Burn feels like it could have been expanded into an intense pay-cable series a… More
A fascinating failure, this stylish and noirish Rashomon meets The Usual Suspects ultimately proves to be gunpowder in a thimble, more Who-Done-What? than Who-Done-It? Too dense for its running time, Slow Burn feels like it could have been expanded into an intense pay-cable series a la The Wire and The Shield. In the R-rated Slow Burn, Liotta plays a mayoral election-seeking D.A. who finds himself entangled in controversy after his beautiful assistant D.A. (Jolene Blalock) confesses to a race-related killing. Not for lack of trying, the B-list ensemble gives it their all. Such a loaded hot potato reminds this reviewer of programs like Crash where an issue-driven movie premise got blown up into a 12-episode season of televised drama. Unfortunately, Slow Burn puts a cap on such potential and the under-developed drama just plain burns out. Without the proper time and attention, the short-fused plot comes across more far-fetched than fetching. Bottom line: Too big for its britches.
Panta O

[color=red][b][size=5]SLOW BURN (2007)[/size][/b][/color] [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1164590/photo_11.jpg[/img] [color=brown][b][i]Ovaj je film u bioskopu dosada videlo preko milion ljudi, a na videu preko 13 miliona... pa neka vam to nesto kaze o… More
[color=red][b][size=5]SLOW BURN (2007)[/size][/b][/color] [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1164590/photo_11.jpg[/img] [color=brown][b][i]Ovaj je film u bioskopu dosada videlo preko milion ljudi, a na videu preko 13 miliona... pa neka vam to nesto kaze o kakvom se filmu radi: KAO DA JE PRAVLJEN ZA VIDEO TRZISTE kada ste umorni dosli s posla i KADA VAM SE TAKO SPAVA... [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1164590/photo_03.jpg[/img] Film ide u toliko zapleta da nisam siguran da na kraju uopste i ima rasplet. Gluma nije nesto posebno, a svaki dijalog je ne samo dramatican, vec predramatican, kao da ljudima u svakom trenutku treba prepisati nesto za smirenje! Wayne Beach, ka reziser, nije uspeo u ovom neo-noir trileru da zadrzi moju ili bilo ciju paznju u bioskopu... naprotiv... vecina njih je bila zahvalna na omogucenom vremenu za slatko spavanje... dok se akcija (isprepletenih likova) u neimenovanom gradu u Americi odvijala punom parom... [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1164590/photo_10.jpg[/img] Ipak, golisave scene nisu bile za zanemarivanje, iako je i tamo nedostajalo malo vise maste! [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1164590/photo_08.jpg[/img] Ja cu zapamtiti ovo delo kao jos jedan film Ray Liotte i Jolene Blalock (ispod proseka) i oceniti sa 4/10. [/i][/b][/color]
Fascade F

A major disappointment for me because the preview was so good but the movie was so slow and demeaning!Get it if you dare..then add a half a star...Ew!
William G

A tedious third-rate Usual Suspects. LL Cool J gets some truly awful dialogue.
Chosen 7

Great suspense-drama with a good yet somewhat predictable twist.