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Reviews Counted: 33
Fresh: 4
Rotten:29
Average Rating: 3.7/10
Consensus: With wooden acting and hammy, overheated dialogue, Slow Burn isn't so much a noir as it is a mediocre parody of one.
Theatrical Release: Apr 13, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $1,181,197
Synopsis: In director/writer Wayne Beach's neo-noir thriller, SLOW BURN, various characters on both sides of the law collide in an unnamed city. District Attorney Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is campaigning to become mayor, but his assistant D.A. and... [More]
Shelved for over a year, this incompetent mystery thriller stops periodically so some character or other can deliver an expository speech and pull the plot back on track, but by the end the story has turned into a hair ball.
The screenplay is riddled with so many problems, clichés, cheats, and borrowed ideas that the movie never takes off on a story level.
Barely flickers as a far-fetched urban tale of chameleon-like characters.
...the story is intriguing enough to hold our interest through all the film noir pretensions...
When a movie has been sitting around since 2003, why wouldn't you just throw it at the DVD shelf rather than subjecting big-screen audiences to it?
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.
Easy to understand why Slow Burn sat on the shelf for four years, but harder to understand why it didn't go straight to DVD or Showtime late night.
The theme of racial confusion that attempts to underlie this would-be noirish murder mystery becomes just one more unintentionally hilarious aspect...
If you have not figured out the identity of Luden by the finale, it will only be because you do not care.
The bigger problem is that for all the plot turns and reversals and flashes of action that Beach has structured into his film, there's an elusive extra something that's missing.
John Grisham meets The Usual Suspects by way of late-night Cinemax in this derivative thriller.
Writer-director Wayne Beach figures if you liked Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s big climactic reversal, you’ll love four of them in a row!
Its cavalcade of 'twists' in the last 20 minutes come off the conveyor belt so quickly and haphazardly that they all wind up in a big pile on the floor, waiting to be snorted at by incredulous viewers.
It's not a brilliant movie. It's certainly not worth canceling any appointments to catch at the theater. But it's more than worth a quick look on cable, or even an impulsive rental.
April 28, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review 
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April 15, 2007:
Box Office Guru Wrapup: "Disturbia" Scares Up #1 Opening
Paramount replaced itself at the top of the North American box office chart as its new teen thriller "Disturbia" opened ahead of expectations in first place bumping... More...
April 12, 2007:
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This weekend Hollywood just doesn't know its limits. Six new releases will jam into an already crowded marketplace on Friday trying to connect with spring moviegoers. More...
April 12, 2007:
Critical Consensus: "Hoax" Shines; Force Is With "ATHF"; "Disturbia" Mixed; "Pathfinder," "Stranger" Not Perfect; "Redline," Slow Burn" Not Screened
This week at the movies, we've got snoops ("Disturbia," starring Shia LaBeouf), temps ("Perfect Stranger," starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis), Mooninites... More...
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