Movie Type: Crime Thriller, Psychological Thriller
Themes: Murder Investigations, Witnessing a Crime, Lawyers
Main Cast: Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Mekhi Phifer, Bruce McGill, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Release Year: 2007
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A cop trying to clear the name of a woman he loves falls deep into a morass of corruption in this crime thriller. Ford Cole (Ray Liotta) is the district attorney in a crime-ridden town where he's contemplating a run for mayor in a bid for greater power. Cole is also having an affair with one of his assistants, Nora Timmer (Jolene Blalock), though he tries to keep that a secret. One evening, while Cole is chatting with journalist Trippin (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Timmer arrives with startling news -- she claims to have been sexually assaulted by Isaac Duparde (Mekhi Phifer), a clerk at a nearby music store who broke into her apartment. Making matters more complicated is the fact that Duparde is currently dead in her flat, leaving Cole to find a way to protect Timmer while not staining his own reputation. Cole realizes this may be harder than he imagined when Luther Pinks (LL Cool J) arrives on the scene to tell him that Timmer actually lured Duparde back to her apartment on purpose, in an effort to get information on a well-connected organized crime figure. Slow Burn was the first directorial effort from screenwriter Wayne Beach. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Slowly increasing anger. It is often put as
do a slow burn, meaning "gradually grow angrier," as in I did a slow burn when he kept me waiting for three hours. The burn in this idiom comes from burn up in the sense of "make furious." The term was first cited in 1938 and was closely associated with co-median Edgar Kennedy.
Slow Burn is an American motion picture starring Ray Liotta, Jolene Blalock, and LL Cool J, which is notable for the extended period between production and eventual release. A crime drama, the film was produced in 2003, and finally given a showing at the 2005Toronto Film Festival. It was released in American theaters on April 13, 2007, but performed poorly. It had an opening weekend of $778,123 in ticket sales and closed in just 2 weeks with a domestic total of $1,237,615. DVD release occurred in North America on July 24, 2007, almost exactly four years after the film was shot.
The film has themes of inter-racial dating, "passing" or pretending to be a member of another race, stereotypes included, and using a rape defense to the accusation of murder. Its total budget of $15,500,000, implies that most actors accepted salaries under $1 million US, well below the standards of Hollywood. [1].
Actress Jolene Blalock made her only public nude appearance in this film. Blalock had said in an early interview she would never appear publicly nude[citation needed], only to appear nude in this film in a rape scene some call soft-core porn (Rated R in the USA). Her attitude toward nudity has evolved, since she turned away a large sum to appear nude in Playboy magazine and instead appeared with some clothes on inside it in April 2002 and twice in Maxim magazines. She later said, in an interview in April 2006, "Nudity is natural but not until a person accepts and loves who they are." [2]
