From time to time you catch one of those movies that has a great script but no story. For Slow Burn, it’s the other way around. Here is a great story brutalized by a terrible script and poor storytelling to boot.

A directorial debut for Wayne Beach, Slow Burn spins the tale of District Attorney Ford Cole (played by always angry Ray Liotta) who gets entangled in a web of double, triple and quadruple crosses as he tries to figure out whether his African-American assistant Nora Timmer (played by ex Vulcan hottie Jolene Blalock) killed her alleged rapist Isaac Duperde (Mekhi Phifer) in self defense, or if it was murder. Timmer’s ethnicity is noted only because it (or rather the question of what race she really belongs to) plays an integral part in the story.

The movie jumps from present time to several alternate pasts through the stories told by Timmer and Luther Pinks – a friend of the murder victim/rapist played by none other than LL Cool J – about what really happened. Cole desperately tries to piece it all together as the clock ticks toward 5 am – the time when something unknown is set to happen. Sound melodramatic? Well it is. And appallingly so.

Slow Burn is one of those movies where the director (a writer at heart) makes the unfortunate choice of telling the story mostly through voiceovers – a trick that almost never works. In this case, the actual reading of the voiceover is so slow you feel like going out for coffee. What’s worse is that it’s coated with condescension, as if you don’t have the brains to figure things out so every minute detail has to be explained to you. The fact that the monologues appeared to have been ripped out of Clichés for Dummies (not actually in existence at the time of this review but probably in the works by the looks of it) doesn’t exactly help matters. Pinks’ description of Timmer as “smelling like a ripe tangerine, ready to be peeled,” just about puts you off the fruit for good.

Morten’s Take: Slow Burn is a perfect description of the feeling you get between your eyes while you try to force yourself to justify the money spent on renting this abomination of a movie.
Angela’s Take: I warned that no good would come of renting a movie with Ray Liotta as the headliner. But do men listen? Noooooooooo.