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.
