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Slow Burn
Lionsgate Home Entertainment // R // July 24, 2007
List Price: $27.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Slow Burn" had the potential to be a solid modern noir. Its character-heavy story and complicated plot mix well with its glossy nighttime imagery and steamy sexual undertones (and not-so-undertones). The respectable cast has a handle on the no-nonsense tone of the piece, and director Wayne Beach shows a keen eye for slick visuals.
And yet. Oh, this movie has a great big and yet: the screenplay is riddled with so many problems, clichés, cheats, and borrowed ideas that the movie never takes off on a story level. Considering the point of a mystery of this nature is to bask in the intricacies of a well-crafted story, this makes all the film's successes utterly moot from frame one.
Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is a powerful D.A. and up-and-coming mayoral candidate. He keeps the city clean despite the efforts of crime lord Danny Luden, a man so mysterious that no one can claim to have ever seen him. When Cole's top assistant, Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), kills a man in alleged self-defense, Cole must spend the evening piecing together the various flashbacks relating to not only the killing, but all the interwoven personal connections that led up to it - including links to Luden himself.
Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) steps forward as a friend of the deceased (Mekhi Phifer), explaining that Nora knew him for months, not the mere days Nora suggests. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Sykes (Taye Diggs) was recently released from prison on Nora's orders - does that connect somehow to Luden? And what of the police chief (Bruce McGill), whose own cover-ups are getting in the way of Cole's investigation? Or the journalist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sent to interview the D.A.? Could Cole's own affair with Nora have darker significance?
It's impossible to explain just how many wrong steps the script takes without giving away the ending, although it can be said that the ending contains so many twists, reveals, and switcheroos that by the closing credits, it looks more like a parody of a twist-heavy film than the real deal. There is at least one character who exist here only to become part of the "shocking" finale; remove this person's introduction, and they have no effect on the story itself, only its ending. Which makes the ending completely useless - these surprises aren't earned, they're just thrown at us, often at complete random.
Beach, who previously co-wrote the Wesley Snipes flicks "Murder at 1600" and "The Art of War," scripts "Slow Burn" from a story by himself and Anthony Walton; this film is also Beach's directorial debut. By focusing so much on endings that look cool, Beach draws his attention away from the structure of his story, which is greatly lacking. A highly derivative work (it's one part "Rashomon" and three parts "The Usual Suspects" - Luden is a blatant low-rent rehash of Keyser Soze), this movie quickly begins to bore, as we realize the many convolutions the plot takes are leading up to a whole lot of not much, because Beach is saving the good stuff for his ending.
The cast tries their best to make their characters interesting enough to deserve our attention, but they're left struggling with a screenplay that does them no favors. The LL Cool J character, for example, explains that to him, everything smells like food. The interrogation room, he says, reeks of burnt pot roast, and Nora smelled of fruit. It's a twitch in the writing that's meant to add some quirky flavor - but Beach does nothing with this. It's just there for a scene or two, then forgotten completely. Why even bring it up?
Structurally, the script can't even hold up well. In one scene, Cole stops the investigation so he can tell his side of the story, complete with flashback. Since Cole's function in the story is to be the receiver, not giver, of information - essentially a surrogate for the audience, as we both receive facts at the same time and both work simultaneously to assemble the puzzle - having him turn around and tell himself what he knows is a lazy flub at best, a gigantic cheat at worst.
Beach tries to work in some themes on race, with Nora's racial status remaining ambiguous. (She's described as a "trick of the light," as she can pass for both white and black with ease.) And yet all the script does with this concept is allow it to make Nora exotic - the woman as chameleon. It's as if Beach wanted to dig deeper into the idea of race in 21st century America (Nora's very blackness is an asset to Cole's mayoral campaign), then backed off at the last minute, leaving only half-formed ideas floating around the story.
"The Usual Suspects" gets heat now and then from detractors who complain that the twist ending essentially negates all that came before; the response to this is that "The Usual Suspects" wasn't really about the story being true or false - it was about how it was being told, and it was being told extremely well. "Slow Burn" tries something of the same thing (it's obvious from the start that some of these flashbacks are false), but winds up being told rather poorly. For all its fine workmanship, there's no saving a flawed script, and ultimately the film becomes a tiresome waiting game for the next big surprise.
The DVD
Video & Audio
I'll give the movie this much: it looks phenomenal. The anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1, approximating the original 1.85:1 format) transfer is a showcase for the film's gorgeous hues, deep, dark tones that give the image the right noir touch. The soundtrack is offered in a restrained, very solid Dolby 5.1 EX and a decent Dolby stereo; optional English and Spanish subtitles are provided.
Extras
Beach's commentary track starts promisingly enough, offering mild insights onto the screenplay's evolution and the concessions that had to be made in bringing the script to screen. And every now and then, Beach does return to a more honest look at his picture, but for the most part, he retreats to safer "we shot this at 3 AM and it was cold" or "here's what this scene's about" blandness.
"Fire in the Steets" (7:22) is your standard EPK-style making-of featurette, offering no memorable information.
An alternate take of the film's epilogue (1:48) features a new voice-over but otherwise remains identical. A deleted scene (1:02) shows Nora interrogating a young gang member; a brief shot from this scene was included in the final cut during a montage introducing us to the Nora character. Both scenes are in a flat letterbox and, having apparently not been cared for at all, are very washed out and hazy.
A trivia subtitle track is completely worthless, offering bland factoids about the cast and crew with increasing irregularity.
A set of previews for other Lionsgate releases play as the disc loads; you can skip past them if you choose.
Final Thoughts
"Slow Burn" was filmed in 2003 but sat unreleased until this year. I had no other place in the review to mention this, so I toss it in here haphazardly. Anyway. Rent It if you'd like to see a solid cast plow their way through an undemanding thriller.
And yet. Oh, this movie has a great big and yet: the screenplay is riddled with so many problems, clichés, cheats, and borrowed ideas that the movie never takes off on a story level. Considering the point of a mystery of this nature is to bask in the intricacies of a well-crafted story, this makes all the film's successes utterly moot from frame one.
Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is a powerful D.A. and up-and-coming mayoral candidate. He keeps the city clean despite the efforts of crime lord Danny Luden, a man so mysterious that no one can claim to have ever seen him. When Cole's top assistant, Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), kills a man in alleged self-defense, Cole must spend the evening piecing together the various flashbacks relating to not only the killing, but all the interwoven personal connections that led up to it - including links to Luden himself.
Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) steps forward as a friend of the deceased (Mekhi Phifer), explaining that Nora knew him for months, not the mere days Nora suggests. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Sykes (Taye Diggs) was recently released from prison on Nora's orders - does that connect somehow to Luden? And what of the police chief (Bruce McGill), whose own cover-ups are getting in the way of Cole's investigation? Or the journalist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sent to interview the D.A.? Could Cole's own affair with Nora have darker significance?
It's impossible to explain just how many wrong steps the script takes without giving away the ending, although it can be said that the ending contains so many twists, reveals, and switcheroos that by the closing credits, it looks more like a parody of a twist-heavy film than the real deal. There is at least one character who exist here only to become part of the "shocking" finale; remove this person's introduction, and they have no effect on the story itself, only its ending. Which makes the ending completely useless - these surprises aren't earned, they're just thrown at us, often at complete random.
Beach, who previously co-wrote the Wesley Snipes flicks "Murder at 1600" and "The Art of War," scripts "Slow Burn" from a story by himself and Anthony Walton; this film is also Beach's directorial debut. By focusing so much on endings that look cool, Beach draws his attention away from the structure of his story, which is greatly lacking. A highly derivative work (it's one part "Rashomon" and three parts "The Usual Suspects" - Luden is a blatant low-rent rehash of Keyser Soze), this movie quickly begins to bore, as we realize the many convolutions the plot takes are leading up to a whole lot of not much, because Beach is saving the good stuff for his ending.
The cast tries their best to make their characters interesting enough to deserve our attention, but they're left struggling with a screenplay that does them no favors. The LL Cool J character, for example, explains that to him, everything smells like food. The interrogation room, he says, reeks of burnt pot roast, and Nora smelled of fruit. It's a twitch in the writing that's meant to add some quirky flavor - but Beach does nothing with this. It's just there for a scene or two, then forgotten completely. Why even bring it up?
Structurally, the script can't even hold up well. In one scene, Cole stops the investigation so he can tell his side of the story, complete with flashback. Since Cole's function in the story is to be the receiver, not giver, of information - essentially a surrogate for the audience, as we both receive facts at the same time and both work simultaneously to assemble the puzzle - having him turn around and tell himself what he knows is a lazy flub at best, a gigantic cheat at worst.
Beach tries to work in some themes on race, with Nora's racial status remaining ambiguous. (She's described as a "trick of the light," as she can pass for both white and black with ease.) And yet all the script does with this concept is allow it to make Nora exotic - the woman as chameleon. It's as if Beach wanted to dig deeper into the idea of race in 21st century America (Nora's very blackness is an asset to Cole's mayoral campaign), then backed off at the last minute, leaving only half-formed ideas floating around the story.
"The Usual Suspects" gets heat now and then from detractors who complain that the twist ending essentially negates all that came before; the response to this is that "The Usual Suspects" wasn't really about the story being true or false - it was about how it was being told, and it was being told extremely well. "Slow Burn" tries something of the same thing (it's obvious from the start that some of these flashbacks are false), but winds up being told rather poorly. For all its fine workmanship, there's no saving a flawed script, and ultimately the film becomes a tiresome waiting game for the next big surprise.
The DVD
Video & Audio
I'll give the movie this much: it looks phenomenal. The anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1, approximating the original 1.85:1 format) transfer is a showcase for the film's gorgeous hues, deep, dark tones that give the image the right noir touch. The soundtrack is offered in a restrained, very solid Dolby 5.1 EX and a decent Dolby stereo; optional English and Spanish subtitles are provided.
Extras
Beach's commentary track starts promisingly enough, offering mild insights onto the screenplay's evolution and the concessions that had to be made in bringing the script to screen. And every now and then, Beach does return to a more honest look at his picture, but for the most part, he retreats to safer "we shot this at 3 AM and it was cold" or "here's what this scene's about" blandness.
"Fire in the Steets" (7:22) is your standard EPK-style making-of featurette, offering no memorable information.
An alternate take of the film's epilogue (1:48) features a new voice-over but otherwise remains identical. A deleted scene (1:02) shows Nora interrogating a young gang member; a brief shot from this scene was included in the final cut during a montage introducing us to the Nora character. Both scenes are in a flat letterbox and, having apparently not been cared for at all, are very washed out and hazy.
A trivia subtitle track is completely worthless, offering bland factoids about the cast and crew with increasing irregularity.
A set of previews for other Lionsgate releases play as the disc loads; you can skip past them if you choose.
Final Thoughts
"Slow Burn" was filmed in 2003 but sat unreleased until this year. I had no other place in the review to mention this, so I toss it in here haphazardly. Anyway. Rent It if you'd like to see a solid cast plow their way through an undemanding thriller.
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