Slow Burn
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. more..
Director: Wayne Beach
Starring: Ray Liotta, James Todd Smith, Jolene Blalock,Mekhi Phifer, Guy Torry
Beach blends all the performing styles smoothly: LL's blithe coolness, Blalock's sultry ambiguity, Liotta's slow-boiling intensity, Ejiofor's dapper amiability, Phifer's brooding intensity.
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.
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.
The sort of cheesy thriller that would prove mildly diverting on late-night cable, Slow Burn at least features a terrific cast to enliven its familiar elements.
What begins as a moderately interesting set of interconnected mysteries involving race and identity soon grows eye-rollingly laborious, not to mention increasingly derivative of Christopher McQuarrie's "Usual Suspects" script.
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