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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.
[Director] Beach slams open the trap doors of false and real identity with such a frenzy that, even at the end, you're not sure who's who and what they did to whom. It's sloppy fun to watch while you're in the theater.
...the story is intriguing enough to hold our interest through all the film noir pretensions...
Teeming with lurid atmosphere, Slow Burn touches on mutual stalking, inner city gangsta capitalism, and detonation of a ghetto as part of a lucrative urban removal gentrification scheme concocted by the city elite.
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.
Deficiencies aside, Slow Burn is almost worth seeing.
The screenplay is riddled with so many problems, clichés, cheats, and borrowed ideas that the movie never takes off on a story level.
While Slow Burn does admittedly pick up towards the end - as the film morphs into a flat-out ripoff of The Usual Suspects - there's virtually nothing in the first hour that even comes close to holding the viewer's interest.
LL Cool J's ambition to make it sound as if he's "doin' it" with every syllable that comes out of his mouth works to campily put the fire out on the film's offensive pretense to race consciousness.
Has direct-to-video etched all over it.
Top CriticIts 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.
The millisecond its all over you’ll be wondering if the ink has dried on the court papers filed by Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie.
Slow Burn tries to be smolder, but ultimately there's no heat.
John Grisham meets The Usual Suspects by way of late-night Cinemax in this derivative thriller.
Top CriticThe title is half-right: the picture moves at a glacial pace (which allows all its absurdities to stand in clear relief), but it generates no heat.
Barely flickers as a far-fetched urban tale of chameleon-like characters.
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.
A slow death.
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.
Nothing is what it seems -- unless it seems cheesy.
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?
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:
Box Office Guru Preview: "Perfect Stranger" Heads A Crowded Field
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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