This attempt at creating an inner city version of The Usual Suspects, complete with its own ghetto Keyser Soze, flounders about in a Dead Sea of expository dialog and flashbacks before beaching itself upon a conclusion that doesn't make a lick of logical or dramatic sense. Writer/director Wayne Beach is so caught up in his own supposed cleverness that he forgets some basic elements of storytelling, resulting in a film that will bore the pants off you.Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is the District Attorney for Los Angeles who also happens to be running for mayor. While being interviewed by Vanity Fair journalist Ty Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Cole is informed that his top gang prosecutor just shot a man. Norah Timmer (Jolene Blalock) says the guy was a stalker who broke into her house and raped her. Cole believes Norah, at least partly because the two of them are secretly lovers, until a man calling himself Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) walks into the police department with a completely different story. He says the dead man's name is Isaac Duperde (Mekhi Phifer) and that Isaac and Norah were lovers. Pinks spins a tale of Norah dragging Isaac deeper and deeper into…well, it's never really clear why she does any of the things she does or why Isaac goes along or what it's all supposed to result in. Even after watching the mystery be revealed at the end, I still don't know why any of it actually happened.The nonsensical scheme does involve a multi-million dollar real estate deal and a gang leader named Danny Luden that Cole is obsessed with convicting even though he's never seen Danny's face or knows who he is. The whole thing revolves around something that's going to happen at 5 AM and, believe it or not, the confusion over whether Norah is a white woman pretending to be black or a black woman who can pass for white. The whole thing wraps up in the extremely rare quintuple twist which is so empty, superficial and stupid that it demonstrates why only morons think they can slap 5 plot twists on the end of their film.Slow Burn starts out violating the first rule of filmmaking and just goes on from there. The rule is "show, not tell" and this story is entirely built and carried out by characters telling other characters things. It has multiple narrators leading the audience through multiple flashbacks interrupted only by more conversations in the present. The main character in all the flashbacks is Isaac, but we're never shown or even told anything about what kind of man he's is or why we should care about him. Ford Cole is the main character in the present, but he's so passive he might as well be a walking doormat. The secret agenda of Danny Luden is also so blatantly red flagged that even a blind and deaf person would notice it. And all Jolene Blalock does in this movie is briefly show off both her boobs and how bad her hair looks in corn rows.Slow Burn is a movie where people you don't care about tell stories about other people you don't care about until springing a surprise ending you still don't care about. Unless you're a big Star Trek geek and want to see T'Pol's hooters, there's no reason to waste your time with this film.

If you didn't like it or if you thought it was anything at all like Usual Supsects, you probably didn't get it.Everything up to the last twenty minutes is set-up. The key is to concentrate, but not to think too much. You'll either get it or you won't The mastermind was not Danny, it was the assistant DA, "Jackie". She was playing Danny. It's my belief that she was also an FBI agent. She was, as LL's character hinted when he said that even the FBI had been penetrated, the dirty FBI agent.She was pretending to be black, as she new this would get Danny's attention and make him believe she could be manipulated. She made Danny feel comfortable enough to give her information about rival gangs which she used to propel herself into the DA's office putting her in a perfect spot to manipulate Ray Liotta's character.LL Cool J was an FBI agent, although he was not dirty. The chief of police was in on the whole deal with Jackie as he was the one who let her out in the end.Jackie decided not to press charges against Taye diggs' character as to draw suspicion towards him in the end. She also new he would point out anybody as Danny. That was imperative as it set-up LL's character.She set-up the hit men who wanted Ray's character dead. She pointed Mekhi's character out as Rupert. Rupert was the one who rigged the gas explosion.After Danny got arrested, everything went on to her.The key is to remember that the main plot had little to do with Jolene's character being raped, and it had little to do with LL's character.

This wore out its welcome about 40 minutes into the movie and after the halfway point, about 10 minutes later, I totally didn't care if our girl here was innocent or guilty. The story just became plodding.I am so glad it wasn't just me, that the first review I see here - Mermaidbronze - felt the same way I did. I'll put it in simple terms: this film was not as "smart" and "clever" as it thought it was. In fact, it was stupid because it committed the ultimate sin for making a movie - it bored the hell out of its audience, and an audience that includes some "smart people" who can figure things out. A convoluted movie is just that, and not fun to watch no matter what any viewer's IQ might be.Movies that revolve around the big question "Did he/she kill the person or not" are either extremely interesting and involving or the opposite. I found it un-involving, and when you don't care about the characters, then you don't care who's innocent or guilty and the film loses all effectiveness.This movie was filmed in 2003 but not released until this year - four years later! Maybe they knew it was a turkey.

SLOW BURN (2007) * Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Mekhi Phifer, Jolene Blalock, Guy Torry, Taye Diggs, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bruce McGill.More like a simmering potboiler:1995's crackling neo-noir sleeper "The Usual Suspects" was in a class by itself but lately there have been some numerous copycats in attempting to glean some magic from its infamous twisted ending revealing who its arch-criminal Keyser Soze really was. The latest pretender to the throne is a horse of another color (and yes the pun is meant to be offensive).Set in the twilight hours in a no-names urbane city an ambitious DA named Ford Cole (Liotta, who is also a producer on this dreadful film) who is summoned to the police station when one of his younger protégées (and current lover), Nora Timmer (mannequin Blalock) has been involved in a lethal shooting after her claims of being raped by her assailant, Isaac Duperde.Adding fuel to the fire is many turns in this serpentine crime drama that offers about as much suspense as a re-run of any form of "Law & Order": Timmer may or may not have been having an affair with the deceased assailant, may or may not know the true identity of the mysterious local kingpin and may or may not be involved in a convoluted scheme involving high-level real estate conspiracies with the aforementioned gangsta.Enter Luther Pinks (Cool J), who has some info on Timmer confirming she is not on the level and his identity is also in question (as is his purple prose involving his olfactory senses with laughable line readings).The whole lousy mess is indecipherable until it's cribbing of the final act of "Suspects" for its own conclusion that not only cheats a smart, knowing audience but feels like a cheat from the minute one character is onto another with a fateful 'wait=a-second' glance and pause in his tracks.Although Blalock is a real hottie, the shameful way her character is depicted as either a 'sista pretending to be white' or vice versea as some sort of living-in-the-shadows- chameleon is only further drummed over the head by the ham-fisted direction by Wayne Beach in his debut as a helmsman and also the film's scribe. The fact he actually shows a real-life chameleon during several sequences involving Nora is truly eye rolling.It doesn't help that the film has been on the shelf for several year. That's never a good sign and another is shamefully stealing from a real classic.