Curtis Mark Stratmeyer
=== NO SPOILERS ==> Don't ya love movies that blatantly warn you how bad they are by their title? Here's a prime example. Oh... My... GAWD! It goes on, and on, and on, AND NOTHING HAPPENS! You feel like you're the one lost out in the desert. I only watched this for Spader and Driver. Spader is almost unrecognizable which is the only interesting thing about this movie. Unbelievably, this thing cost (according to IMDB) $10 million to make? So the backers got feel the burn as well.
pksky1
Since I don't recognize anyone in this film, I assume that it is a small time or low budget or some other small enterprise film with a major distributor. For such an unassuming movie, it has a lot of merits. The cinematography is really nice. The acting never falls behind the plot or the script which is a little threadbare. And the story and the characters have a rather original hard boiled reality to them.After renting movie after movie based on heavy promotion only to find myself scrambling for the fast forward, it was a pleasant change to just sit back and see a nicely told story.To see how the heavies do the same thing better see Dafoe and Sam Neil in "Victory"
liberator
A really fantastic film, especially considering its low budget. Usually with such independent films one is disappointed in the lack of closeups, or the stiffness of direction, but not at all in this case. What makes this film excellent is its understatement -- any lesser director & cast would have made this tale of self-destructive obsessions into a self-indulgent orgy of overacting and self-consciousness, but this film is utterly believable, and its characters, although they are at the dark edges of human behavior, are entirely sympathetic and real. The script is also excellent and relatively original while harkening back to such classic films as "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "The Maltese Falcon".A high point is James Spader's heavy accent as "Marcus" -- usually you only see him playing half-asleep yuppies. This film proves he also has great technique. It's Minnie Driver, however, who is the hypnotic focal point of the film -- her passion radiates from the screen.
finemot
As a Minnie Driver fan, I couldn't believe the tawdry disaster unfolded in the telling of "Slow Burn." Produced in part by Two Drivers (Minnie and her sister, Kate), it gives the impression of two intelligent women based on self-destruction. For three generations, Minnie's forebears have been consumed with the search for her grandmother's remains, and with it, the diamonds with which she disappeared into the desert so many years ago. It has consumed all of Trina's (Driver's) life, from infancy into young womanhood. Now, only Trina and her older mentor (and Mom's former lover) are left. Trina has promised that this will be her final year of searching. After this season, she'll throw in the towel. Two bumbling escaped convicts, one a bit dim (but basically of good heart) - the other given to apparant glimpses of insight between fits of pique, literally stagger upon what three generations of desert veterans have been unable to find. One of the cons is played by James Spader, and I swear I didn't recognize him. (As Martha Stuart might say [as far as a career move is concerned], "This is a good thing." His agent would agree. In short, there are disabled trucks with runaway tendencies. Said trucks seem to appear meaningfully late in the movie, almost cluttering the set ... despite their mechanical devastations. With trucks like these, "OK! I'll take the kids!" There's a sterility in interpersonal relationships that makes evem Driver's character appear to be a cardboard cut out. Is this love in bloom, or heatstroke. There's even a touch of 'Marathon Man" here, for those with expensive "tastes." The premise should have been developed into a taut thriller. However, neither the viewer seeking justice nor the sophisticate in search of irony comes away satisfied. There's a lovely and colorful little bird to win your heart; but this is not the bird director Chrisyian Ford delivers to paying audiences. "Is it safe?" to see "Slow Burn?" Only if it's free and you're desperate for seeing Minnie Driver on the big screen.
AD
