Like watching the flame inch along the fuse to the dynamite, "Slow Burn" has crawled from film festival to foreign DVD release and some 18 months later, it's finally hitting theatres.
And well worth the wait. While not of the same tour de force that "The Usual Suspects" gave us (or adding the name Keyser Soze to the pop culture reference catalog), I couldn't help but feel a certain parallel to the film.
District Attorney and mayoral hopeful Ford is wooing a reporter Ty when he gets a call one of his deputy DAs (Nora) just killed Isaac, guy who was trying to rape her. Ford chats with the cops and Nora while Ty hangs out in the lobby.
But there's two sides to every story (if you're lucky, and more if not), and Nora launches into her tale. But we also get the other side of the story, that Isaac wasn't the predator, but was indeed involved in an affair with Nora that had been going on for months. Not much to the pleasure of Ford, who himself has been having an affair with Nora as well.
A healthy mix of sex, lies, politics, and shady real estate wheelin' and dealin', certainly. No one is quite as they seem, most everyone is living a double life, a double lie, or has skeletons in the closet (though if the skeletons are there, or merely planted to frame someone, remains to be seen).
By the end, you find yourself wondering if Keyser Soze may have snuck into this story as well. It's not one of those films where you can nod off and sort out later from the other details, though, so pay attention... almost everything means something, at some point, to someone in the story, and you'll be putting the puzzle together along with Ford, but eventually the 'Elementary, my dear Watson,' will ring through your head in a rather satisfying way.
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