Movie Review Slow Burn

Slow Burn (2007) 

Directed by Wayne Beach 

Written by Wayne Beach 

Starring Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Mekhi Phifer, Taye Diggs, Chiwetel Ejiofor 

Release Date April 13th, 2007

Published April 15th, 2007 

I have long been a believer in the auteur theory. The theory goes that the director is the author of the film and it is the director's vision above all others that makes a great film. This has bred within me a love of the writer-director, that rare breed of filmmaker who controls each of the most important aspects of the storytelling process.

Writer-directors, in my experience, make better films because the vision of the film belongs to them and them alone. But of course, just being a writer director does not make you a great storyteller. Case in point writer-director Wayne Beach the auteur behind the thriller Slow Burn. This convoluted mystery is the perfect example of a case where a director could have used a trained screenwriter to clean up some of the more goof ball aspects of an otherwise well directed movie.

Cole Ford (Ray Liotta) has risen through the ranks of the District Attorney's office at record pace. Not long ago he was a homicide detective taking night classes to become a lawyer. Now as DA he has his eye on the Mayor's office and his rags to riches political story has him profiled by a Vanity Fair reporter, Ty Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

However, Ford's rise to the top looks to come to a crashing end when his top gang crimes prosecutor, Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), murders a man in her home. She claims the man, Isaac (Mekhi Pfifer) was stalking her and had attempted to rape her when she shot him. Her story however, is full of holes, mostly poked by an informant, Luther Pinks (LL Cool J), who knows far more than he should.

Turning from the prosecutor to the informant, Cole finds two different stories of murder emerging. Each of the stories links back to a major drug dealer and some kind of event that will take place at 5 Am, some 5 hours from the moment of the murder.

Written and Directed by Wayne Beach, Slow Burn is a stylishly rendered attempt at modern noir. Unfortunately, the script is far too convoluted and utterly ludicrous to be taken seriously. Beach sets up a story of race and politics that has some potential, if he were Spike Lee. Wayne Beach is no Spike Lee and thus his racial material doesn't get much deeper than one allegedly interracial romance.

The racial aspect of Slow Burn is strange because it is so shallow and yet so intricately woven into the story. Jolene Blalock's Nora character passes for black but may in fact be white. The psychology of why she felt the need to pass for black, or vice versa, should have been worth exploring. However, Beach doesn't have any insight into this character.

It doesn't help that Blalock, though strikingly beautiful, is a cypher. Not believable as a strong black woman or as a woman trying to be black, Blalock's performance is wooden and predictable. Her performance is in fact so weak it is fair to wonder if Beach was forced to skim her character in order to avoid her performance. That would explain the lack of depth and how the story is hamstrung by lack of insight.

Of course, it could just be that Beach didn't have much beyond his neo-noir pretension to begin with.

You have to respect the commitment of Ray Liotta. He has made a number of pretty bad movies over the years but each performance is committed and even believable. Liotta has no second gear; he goes at each role for boredom and believes in each character he plays no matter how bizarre everything around him may be. As Slow Burn clumsily ambles to its predictable conclusion, Liotta is often affecting and believable. Sadly, the story, and his co-stars are far too inferior for Liotta to rescue.

LL Cool J certainly seems to be having fun playing a character who may as well have been called Red Herring. His character evolves to fit whatever odd shift in logic the story takes as if his character were being rewritten on the spot so he could deliver whatever necessary expository dialogue needed to make sense of this convoluted mystery. At Least he's having fun; just listen to him deliver such goofball lines as "She smelled like potatoes and every man wanted to be the gravy".

LL has a number of lines like that, "She smelled like an orange, ready to be peeled", and he delivers each with a voice that seems just about to burst into laughter.

There is a large kitsch factor on Slow Burn. Both LL Cool J and Jolene Blalock deliver performances that are laughable to the point of turning the film into a campy unintentional comedy. The script is bad enough with its half baked plot strands and predictable ending. Throw in LL Cool J and Jolene Blalock's performances and the kitsch factor nearly makes Slow Burn so bad it's good.

Okay, maybe not so good; but entertaining in ways that I'm sure writer-director Wayne Beach never intended.

Movie Review Last Holiday

Last Holiday (2006) 

Direted by Wayne Wang 

Written by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman 

Starring Queen Latifah, LL Cool J Jane Adams, Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito 

Release Date January 13th, 2006

Published January 12th, 2006 

Sitting down to watch the Queen Latifah comedy Last Holiday I had low expectations. My expectations were exceeded mightily by a good natured sweet comedy about life, love and the ever looming specter of death. Okay, I added the specter of death thing. This is, after all, a comedy.

Last Holiday is a comedy about a woman who is told she is going to die soon and chucks it all -job, friends, bills- and runs off to wile away her last days in a resort in the alps. The specter of impending death never really enters the film because Queen Latifah is such a joy to watch and director Wayne Wang such a carefree auteur that he eschews making a real movie and focuses his attention on making his star look good.

Queen Latifah stars in Last Holiday as Georgia Byrd, a small demonstration cook with dreams of running her own restaurant. For now she spends her evenings watching Emeril Live and cooking great meals she doesn't eat. She cooks for practice and occasionally for a teenage neighbor but mostly she cooks for the joy of cooking.

At work Georgia fends off an ever menacing middle manager (Matt Ross) whose ambition threatens everyone's job, and finds time to gossip with her pal Rochelle (Jane Adams). The gossip most often turns to talk of the handsome new grill salesman Sean (L.L Cool J) who has his eyes on Georgia though she refuses to believe it.

The plot kicks in when a head injury at work sends Georgia to the hospital where her doctor gives her a prognosis of imminent death due to a brain tumor. Georgia has about two weeks to live. What would you do if you only had two weeks to live? For Georgia Byrd, the answer is to quit her job and run to a fabulous European resort with every cent of her savings and spend her last days indulging the finest food in the world from one of the world's greatest chef, Chef Didier (Gerard Depardieu).

Flashing what little cash she has for the best room in the place, the best table in the restaurant and the finest clothes in Europe naturally draws the attention of her fellow guests that coincidentally include a Senator (Giancarlo Esposito) from Georgia's own district and the owner of the store Georgia worked at (Timothy Hutton). The less said about this convenient plot, the better.

Based loosely on a British comedy from 1950, of the same title, Last Holiday is an ebullient film full of vibrant life and surprisingly big laughs. Director Wayne Wang is not working with much of a script which forces him to rely mostly on the charms of his lead actress. The effervescent Queen Latifah rescues what would have likely been a very dull picture with a terrifically self-effacing and brave performance that earns big laughs and loads of pathos.

If you can't sympathize and laugh riotously with Queen Latifah clearly you are far too cynical.

As the one true draw of Last Holiday Queen Latifah had a lot riding on her and you never once see her sweat. Whether she is sassily rebuffing the advances of the lecherous Senator or wrapped head to toe in a mud wrap and needing a bathroom break, Latifah's every move is pure charm, she is just that lovable.

Sure, Last Holiday is mindless and often forgettable. The plot is a joke of coincidence and predictability. Who cares! When you get to spend 90 minutes with a movie friend like Queen Latifah that makes up for a lot of problems. Queen Latifah is simply that much of a pleasure to watch in Last Holiday, so much you forget how bad the picture as a whole truly is.

There are few actors or actresses who can make you forget you are watching a bad movie and simply focus on them. Queen Latifah failed to pull off that trick in awful films Taxi, The Cookout and Bringing Down The House but she really pulls it off in Last Holiday, a bad movie made pleasant even entertaining by a star truly coming into her own.

Last Holiday is like candy, it may not be good for you, it may rot your teeth or your brain, but while you're enjoying it nothing else matters. This is a movie for candy lovers.

Movie Review Rollerball

Rollerball (2002) 

Directed by John McTiernan

Written by Larry Ferguson, John Pogue 

Starring Chris Klein, Rebecca Romijn, LL Cool J, Paul Heyman 

Release date February 8th, 2002 

Published February 7th, 2002 

Roger Ebert once said of the movie Mad Dog Time that the film did not improve upon the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same amount of time. I haven't seen Mad Dog Time but after seeing Rollerball I completely understand the sentiment. Rollerball is astonishingly boring on top of being mind numbingly awful. 

Rollerball stars poor misguided Chris Klein as the star player of the international sport of Rollerball. I've skipped ahead of the story, he doesn't begin the film by playing Rollerball, but you see the beginning of the film has nothing to do with anything. My theory is that the director owed the extras in the scene a favor and decided to leave it in the final product.

Oh right the story, anyway Chris joins his old college buddy LL Cool J in playing Rollerball. Leave out the age inconsistency in their having been college buddies because counting the inconsistencies in Rollerball might take as long as watching the film itself. Forget about the story description too, it's hard to call something so scattershot a story. From what I gathered, there is something about Jean Reno being a bad guy who hurts people and Chris and LL want to stop him along with Rebecca Romijn who does.... something. I'm not sure exactly what her function was, because all I remember is her awful, awful accent.

Adding to the idiocy, for some reason there is a ten-minute section of the film around the halfway mark that was filmed with a night-vision camera. We don't know why but there it is in all its pointlessness. As for the sport of Rollerball, I believe it's a series quick edits of mindless violence set to some stupid speed metal anthem.

What is most frightening is that this is the re-shot and "improved" version of Rollerball. The film was initially to be released in August 2001 but after a disastrous preview screening attended by our friends at Ain't It Cool News. The producers pulled the film and ordered it re-cut and re-shot. If this is the better version, the original must be something akin to a filmed bowel movement.

Honestly, when wrestling announcer Paul Heyman stars as the Rollerball announcer and brings the film it's only source of dignity there is something very wrong. If you were thinking of seeing Rollerball let me save you the ticket price. Make a fist and punch yourself about the stomach and head for two solid hours. That's easily the equivalent experience of watching Rollerball, if you also poked yourself in the eyes while doing it. 

Movie Review: 'Mindhunters'

Mindhunters (2005) 

Directed by Renny Harlin 

Written by Wayne Kramer, Kevin Brobdin, Ehren Kruger

Starring Val Kilmer, LL Cool J, Jonny Lee Miller, Kathryn Morris

Release Date May 13th, 2005 

Published May 12th, 2005 

Mindhunters was a strange affair. The film was completed in 2002 but did not get released by the late Dimension Films until 2005. Why? Who knows, they probably realized the the stinker they had on their hands. After finally blowing the dust off this crusty little thriller with LL Cool J, Val Kilmer and Christian Slater, the newly, non-Weinstein regime at Dimension films finally dumped the film into theaters. Why they bothered with theaters instead of directing it to the video stores of 2005 where it belonged must have been some kind of contractual obligation. There is no other explanation for why garbage like Mindhunters ever made it to such a wide release.

LL Cool J is the star of Mindhunters-- he must have drawn the short straw-- as a shady cop invited to join a group of rookie FBI profilers on a training mission on a deserted island military base. Val Kilmer is the leader of this little band but his role is little more than a cameo.  And, yes, that is Christian Slater as one of the profilers of whose fate the trailer and commercials spoiled mightily and for no good reason whatsoever.

Joining Cool J at the head of the cast is Johnny Lee Miller as Lucas and Kathryn Morris from TV's Cold Case as Sara. They are joined by a group of other semi-recognizable early 2000s character actors including Eion Bailey then of TV's ER, Patricia Velasquez and Clifton Collins Jr. each of whom line up to be victims of the films serial killer as if they were camp counselors having sex at Crystal Lake. Canon fodder is a kind description of the roles played by Bailey, Velasquez and Collins. 

Essentially this little group is on the island to profile a fictional serial killer who is obsessed with time. The military base is set up as a small town with dummies standing in for real people. The profilers must locate the crime scenes, examine the fake dead bodies and assemble the clues that could lead them to the fictional killer. However, as they quickly find out from the death of one of their own, this serial killer is very real.

A search of the island shows the young profilers are either alone on the island, or not entirely thorough, thus leading to the obvious conclusion that one of them is in fact the killer. As the Rube Goldbergian murder devices unfold and remove one obvious victim after another, it is not hard to decipher which characters are going to survive and which is the killer. Morris, Miller and L.L Cool J all have main character powers so it's a safe bet that they are among the top suspects. 

This mess of horror film aesthetic and  thriller clichés attempts to fool audiences but not with clever plot twists and good character work.  No, director Renny Harlin's weapon of choice is utterly incomprehensible stupidity. The film was edited by Neil Farrell and Paul Martin Smith both of whom are wishing the Editors union accepted synonyms like the Directors union's well known Allen Smithee. Mindhunters seems as if it were assembled from different versions of the script each featuring different killers, victims, and survivors. This owes more to Harlin's baffling direction and Wayne Kramer's script than anything these poor and likely tortured editors did.

The mess extends to the acting and dialogue as well, as the confused cast bounds from one ridiculous setup to the next seemingly unaware of which version of the script they are acting from. LL Cool J, Johnny Lee Miller and the rest of the cast wander about looking at each other and seeming to say "No, I'm the killer!" "No I'm the killer!" "Are not!" "Am too!" and on and on throughout most of the final 30 minutes of the film. And somehow the killer still turns out to be easily predictable.

Mindhunters is a real shame because this is a very talented cast. Catherine Morris appeared to be a legit star on her TV show Cold Case in 2005. On that clever CBS crime procedural, her steely demeanor perfectly evoked her tough but vulnerable FBI Agent. In Mindhunters, however, Morris is thoroughly done in by a confused and disorienting script that may or may not have had her as both killer and victim at different points during filming.

LL Cool J, Christian Slater and Val Kilmer are shells of the actors who have flirted with stardom in the past. Kilmer we forget was once Batman, but he is far from even that flawed blockbuster in Mindhunters where apparently he owed the producers a favor. How else can you explain why he accepted this minor and entirely forgettable role. Mindhunters was sadly par for the course at the time for Slater who was coming off of his asleep-at-the-wheel lead role in Alone In The Dark. Mindhunters came at a time well before Mr Robot came around and brought Slater back to the respectable world of working actors. 

LL Cool J is at least an enjoyable star to head up and ham up Mindhunters and his is the only thing remarkable about the film. LL Cool , even in this terrible movie, had the charisma of an A-list celebrity and that helped him to outshine some of this deeply confusing script that I'm sure featured him as killer and victim and survivor and savior at different points during the production.

Johnny Lee Miller, Eion Bailey and Clifton Collins Jr. were terrific young actors in 2005 who had succeeded in the past with strong character work. Miller was once quite the rising star after leading man after starring with his then wife Angelina Jolie in Hackers and then gave a strong turn in the cult hit Trainspotting. Bailey made a good impression with a small role in Fight Club and a memorable performance in the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. And as for Collins, his best work was in front of him as he once earned genuine Oscar buzz for his supporting role in Capote opposite Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Watching this terrific cast suffer at the hands of director Renny Harlin is quite painful. All of this talent and  Harlin can do nothing with it but line them up on a formula horror thriller assembly line and eliminate them one by one until he's done picking names out of a hat to decide who lives and who is the killer. To call Renny Harlin a hack is far too simple. After once looking like a star director in the action genre, Harlin regressed as a filmmaker so much that he went from blockbusters to making movies that no longer see a theatrical release. Harlin hasn't seen one of his movies reach theaters in wide release since he made he vomited Exorcist The Beginning into theaters in 2004 to widespread derision and empty box office coffers.