Plot summary (from the studio): A sexy, stylish thriller, Slow Burn stars Ray Liotta as Ford Cole, a big-city district attorney with his eye on the mayor’s office and a big problem on his hands. One of his deputies, the beautiful assistant district attorney Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), has just confessed to killing a man in what she claims was self-defense. A bad situation gets worse when an enigmatic stranger named Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) turns up at the police station to contradict Nora’s story and paint a very different picture of Ford’s talented colleague. With his career and perhaps his life on the line, has a mere handful of hours to sort the truth from the lies in a saga involving Nora, a record store clerk (Mekhi Phifer), and a powerful gang lord.
Warning: Spoilers Below!
Liked:
- I thought this movie had the potential to be engrossing and intriguing. The set-up was pretty good (albeit reminiscent of some better films) and main plot was interesting. I knew Nora was bad right from the start, but I couldn’t guess exactly what her angle was. This was the main thing that kept me watching.
Disliked:
- Some of the acting was pretty bad. I mean, this felt like a straight-to-DVD movie at times, even though it was actually a Lions Gate film and had a regular (though short-lived) theatrical release.
- I thought the whole race angle was kind of dumb. So Nora was actually white but just passed herself off as black to get ahead? Meh, big deal. How much of an impact did her race really have on the actual story/crime? Not a whole heck of a lot, so why even bring that up? That’s the kind of thing that could have been explored in an entirely separate film, not tacked on to one that already had a lot going on.
- I appreciate a good twist as much as the next viewer, but at the end, it just seemed like the writers were throwing as many in as they could possibly fit. Seriously, it was one after the other in quick succession, making it hard to process what was happening on the screen. Instead of going, “Wow, that was great!” I just sat back and said, “Oh, right…” and rolled my eyes.
Rating:
I wasn’t expecting much out of Slow Burn, so it would be unfair to say I was disappointed in the result. Instead, I’ll just say that the movie wasn’t worth the 93 minutes I spent on it, and recommend that you not bother watching. I give it 2 stars out of 5.