Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

nabeel1127 Alright. This was quite honestly one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I bought it at Blockbuster expecting very little from it. I mean, the reviews on it weren't great, it wasn't a big money maker and it wasn't syced up either. So I figured it would be middle of the day, watch it just to pass time type movie... yeah, no. I was supposed to be doing homework while I was watching it. I turned my laptop off 2 minutes into the movie. There was plot turns from beginning to end, good acting, pretty lady constantly naked. I mean, it was an all around movie.True, it had a bit much nudity for my taste, but still, it never took away from the movie. Nobody was ever naked for the sake of being naked. Watch it!! It's not like the garbage thats over hyped now a days.

Roland E. Zwick In the opening scene of "Slow Burn," an assistant district attorney (Jolene Blalock) is found wandering the streets of the city, disheveled and confused, informing those who find her that she has just killed a rapist in self defense. The alleged attacker (Mekhi Phifer) was a man she supposedly met one night in a record store and who then proceeded to stalk her for weeks thereafter. Suddenly, into the head D.A.'s office strides LL Cool J, as a friend of the deceased who has a considerably different story to tell about the events leading up to the murder as well as an entirely disparate take on the couple's relationship. Things get even more dicey when we discover that the D.A. (Ray Liotta) and the assistant D.A. have been conducting a torrid affair of their own for a number of years now."Slow Burn" fails on so many levels of rudimentary storytelling and film-making that it's hard to know where exactly to begin in compiling a list of its shortcomings. To start with, there's something inherently self-defeating and pointless in constructing a narrative from two widely conflicting viewpoints - a la "Rashomon" - when one of the supposed eyewitnesses is already dead and, thus, unable to personally relate his side of the story. How does it enhance the verisimilitude of the tale if most of our information has to come filtered down to us through a secondhand source, a person who wasn't even present at the events he's describing - unless, of course, he was hiding in a nearby closet during all those "intimate" moments he is able to recount in such juicy and exhaustive detail? Either that or the murder victim was one of the chattiest, kiss-and-tell gossips in the history of the movies. And why does it take till the closing reels for the supposedly intelligent professional investigators to smell a rat in that setup? Eventually, the twist-and-turn plotting leads to so much incoherence and confusion that you might well wonder if the filmmakers themselves understood what it was they were doing.Beyond the clumsy, inscrutable storytelling, "Slow Burn" also suffers from some of the most overripe dialogue this side of "The Black Dahlia." With such knee-slapping howlers as "She stood there like a tangerine, ripe and ready to be peeled" and "She walked in smelling like mashed potatoes and every guy within thirty feet wanted to be the gravy," the script could easily win First Prize in a Bad Film Noir Writing contest. It's hard to believe at such times that the film isn't actually intended to be a parody (the acting sure suggests it on occasion). On second thought, perhaps it would be best to stick with that notion; it just might go down easier that way.

bobm5508 Many reviews have alluded to the fact that is a pretty obvious rip-off of "The Usual Suspects". Most of the film's "action" is moved along by long interrogation scenes, with little snippets of who's who and what's what being provided. How much is real and who's telling the truth is batted around like a tennis ball. But the main point is.... who really cares?? It's the exact problem I had with "Usual Suspects".The supposed hero here is Ray Liotta's character. He does alright with the role, but the character is not especially interesting and doesn't have much on the line. He's running for Mayor, but most conversations give the impression he doesn't much care if he wins. His girlfriend may be a lying turncoat, but they don't display much real affection for each other. As he learns about her "true colors" he doesn't seem crushed, only mildly dismayed.The final 10 minutes of twist, twist and re-twist were all flash and no substance. The final twist has us believe an FBI agent allows 3 innocent people to be killed (2 of them police @ the precinct house), to keep his cover, THEN exposes the "Suspect". Phew!! That was a tiring 90 minutes!

seanymphette This is not about concentration. Nor is it about having enough film savvy or cleverness to figure out obscure themes and subplots in films, after all, some of us are David LYNCH fans and enjoy decoding and detangling films as though they are mazes. Those films are at least vibrant and colorful enough to maintain the interest of a BINGO audience. They have characterization, plot, action, theme, etc. We have become accustomed to the complexity of flashbacks and out-of-sequence story lines. We loved "Pulp Fiction", "Memento", "Traffic", and "21 Grams", but a film should not be so chaotic, disorderly, and cluttered with digressive subplots that you can't determine the main theme of the film. When films do this, they are simply exercises in mental masturbation for a self aggrandizing filmmaker and are not interesting to the rest of us. We are not all falling asleep because we have Attention Deficit Disorder. Some of us are really laid-back and low key, with excellent concentration skills, and are detail oriented to a fault. We are falling asleep because the film simply doesn't have any action to move it forward. Its boring, frustrating, and tedious. I mean after all, both Theoretical Mathmaticians and Avant-Garde Poets find what they do equally interesting, neither is more valid than the other. A film needs to be interesting enough to appeal to some audience within the range between them, this film is not, does not.