"Slow Burn" has a confusing and not very convincing script, played out by an intriguing cast that includes Eric Roberts, Beverly D'Angelo, Dan Hedaya, Henry Gibson, and a very young Johnny Depp. There is some fabulous Palm springs scenery, a smidge of nudity, and a plot that asks a lot of tolerance from the viewer. Eric Roberts as the private investigator does quite a bit of soul searching and philosophizing, perhaps in an attempt to try and crystallize a somewhat murky plot. What starts out as a straight forward search for Raymond J. Barry's son, eventually morphs into a kidnapping and murder. The plausibility of the ever thickening plot is questionable, and the motivation leading to three murders questionable. Acceptable entertainment for fans of the fine cast but not much more. - MERK
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vertigo_145 September 2005Maybe, like most others who have seen this film long after it's premiere on television, I wanted to see many of my favorite actors in old and obscure form, which is exactly what 'Slow Burn' is. Except, aside from the nostalgic value, the movie itself is not very good.
Eric Roberts plays former reporter Jacob Ash, hired by a Gerald McMurty (Raymond J. Barry), a rich artist, to investigate the whereabouts of his estranged son, Brian, who had been living with his mother, Laine (Beverly D'Angelo) for the past few years. In a Phillip Marlowe-esquire fashion Jacob Ash narrates what would become more than just an investigation into the whereabouts of Brian. But, once Jacob tracks down Laine, his discoveries break open wide a whole lot of trouble. Perhaps because events in the film move too slowly, there is never much suspense to this little thriller, not even by the end with the finale routine of revealing the culprits and their motives.
However, as said before, this movie is probably one that will draw attention for it's then-relatively unknown cast of actors, which include both a very young Eric Roberts as well as the adorable Johnny Depp, who plays Laine's stepson, Donnie. That may be reason enough to give it a try...if you can find it. -
Reviews_of_the_Dead21 January 2024This is a movie that I never heard about until looking through the filmography for Johnny Depp. My wife, Jaime, and I are running through this for a podcast, JwaC Presents Depp Dive: A Depper Dive into Johnny's Filmography. Seeing that this featured the likes of Eric Roberts, Beverly D'Angelo and Dan Hedaya, I was intrigued.
Now that I've gotten that information out there, what we're getting here is a neo-noir film. Jacob Asch (Roberts) is a former reporter who fell on hard times. He had a hard hitting story, but his station didn't back him. He was unable to reveal his source in court so he lost. He is then hired by Gerald McMurty (Raymond J. Barry) to look for his ex-wife and son. That makes Jacob a private investigator.
This takes him to Palm Springs. He follows a trail looking for Laine Fleischer (D'Angelo). That also brings him to meet her step-son Donnie (Depp). Jacob thinks that he's Gerald's son, but it turns out to be Simon's (Hedaya) son. Gerald and Laine's son passed away. He had no idea. This puts a series of events into motion and secrets to be revealed.
Doing an extended synopsis reveals the Film Noir troupe characters. Roberts' Jacob character is our private investigator. Being that this is a neo-noir, he isn't a PI by trade. He is a former reporter and this is his first job. Laine is our femme fatale and I thought that D'Angelo manages it well. There is also a drug dealer who injects our lead which feels right of movies I saw from the past. It is a good touch to the story we're building. There's even voice-over narration given by Roberts to keep us up to speed with what he's thinking.
I thought that the acting was fine. Roberts is decent as the lead. D'Angelo steals the show from him though. I do think that acting is a bit subdued across the board and that the writing is stiff, which doesn't help. We do get an appearance here by Henry Gibson as Robert who I believe is the owner of the gallery for Gerald's show. Hedaya is solid as was Depp and Emily Longstreth. What is interesting there is that the last two starred together in the comedy Private Resort.
What I'll say in closing is that this is fine. We are getting a made for TV/Showtime film. It is reminiscent of Film Noir, but this neo-noir is lacking the staying power with what it is doing. The mystery kept Jaime and I engaged. Not one I'd come back to, but having seen it, I thought that it has a solid group of actors that interact well.
My Rating: 6 out of 10. -
voodoome14 October 2011I think that this movie is a must see, if you are into film noir then put this on your list.
It's not so much the acting or the scenes that are good but the writing that makes this movie. I recently became aware of this writer Arthur Lyons by chance and found a old copy of this made for TV film and Wow! This writer was so underrated and forgotten that I will for sure read all of his only 12 books with the character Jacob Asch.
It's really sad that Mr. Lyons is no longer with us to write any more of these great stories but we got 11 more movies to make from these 12 great hard boiled books. So come on producers and directors quit putting out pop crap and take a look at this writer. Thank you Mr. Lyons. Your fan Steve H -
ethylester15 February 2004This movie has one of the worst lead characters ever. I say this because he is made out to be the hero when, in my opinion, everything he does in the whole movie screws up people's lives and causes problems. He can do nothing right, yet the movie makes him seem like the cool dude everyone should be looking up to. He has temper tantrums at all the wrong times, he has all the wrong stances on things that end up making people mad at him and getting people killed, he is too nosy, too pushy, too macho, too assuming, makes all the wrong decisions and has no common sense.
It's about a private detective hired by a successful painter to find the woman and son that he walked out on years ago. The detective finds the woman and what he thinks to be her son. However, all kinds of things happen to make this story full of crime, drama and twists. It's made for TV, what do you expect?
Anyhow, the movie is fairly entertaining. Johnny Depp is very young in this one and has an awful 80's haircut. He chews gum and tosses a soccer ball around for about 5 minutes and that is all we get to see of him.
For some reason, the out of print VHS version of this sells for $40 in online auctions. It must be for Johnny Depp collectors only. It couldn't be because of the plot. It couldn't be. -
DeuceWild_7722 October 2017Jacob Asch (Eric Roberts), a 'down on luck' reporter turned Private Investigator, is hired by an eccentric painter (Raymond J. Barry) to locate his ex-wife, Laine (Beverly D'Angelo) and their son, Brian in Palm Springs where she re-married to a millionaire, Simon Fleischer (Dan Hedaya), becoming the stepmother of his teenage son, Donnie (Johnny Depp). What seemed to be an easy job for Jacob, everything starts to fall apart when he finds out what really happened to Brian at the same time as Donnie, mysteriously, disappears...
Interesting 'made-for-TV" movie, executive produced by Joel Schumacher, written & directed by Matthew Chapman, based on the pulp mystery novel "Castles Burning" by Arthur Lyons, presents a good cast on the top of their form led by a young, clean and sober, Eric Roberts, fresh from his Oscar Nominated role in "Runaway Train" the very same year and blonde bombshell, Beverly D'Angelo, which was tailor made for this kind of role playing the 'femme fatale'.
"Slow Burning" is engaging to watch, despite the direction being a bit pedestrian, it works as a dark detective story set (& shot) in Palm Springs, by having that characteristically 'noirish' visual style tied with a 'noir-type' plot adapted to the more flamboyant 80's decade. The screenplay is well written, intriguing & keeps the viewer guessing, becoming even eerie when it reaches the III Act.
The lower points of this production are the lack of a decent budget (it's visually poor in some scenes) and the shocking content being toned down to accommodate a TV produced movie.
The performances are all good, from Roberts, the camera for sure loved him in his early days of acting to Beverly D'Angelo; the always great character actors, Raymond J. Barry ("Year of the Dragon") & Dan Hedaya ("Commando"); the lovely Emily Longstreth at her cutest & a 22 years old, Johnny Depp (after they appeared together in the sex teen comedy, "Private Resort" the year before) and a lot of well-known faces at the time, including Henry Gibson ("The 'Burbs"), Matthew Laurence ("Eddie and the Cruisers"), Anne Schedeen (the mother from "ALF"), Dennis Lipscomb ("WarGames") or the future "Reservoir Dogs" star, Edward Bunker (who also appeared with Roberts in "Runaway Train" the year before).
In short, this movie became notorious (and remembered nowadays) due to an early appearance on-screen by Johnny Depp, here in his third film and still unaware of his future stardom, but "Slow Burn" deserves to be rediscovered by itself, especially for fans of the 'neo-noir' genre & intricate detective stories and as a final note, Schumacher, who executive produced it, gave another chance at this about 13 years later, producing and directing a big budget theatrically released film called "8MM", which shared some plot points and even characters' fate with this one.
Recommended !! -
araby10217 July 2006This movie is a coveted member of my movie library. While not a mainstream film, it is, in my view, a highly effective film noir in which Eric Roberts is totally underrated as an actor. (I would qualify him as a much better actor than his sister, Julia, who is overrated, but that's another review...) Roberts plays the down-on-his-luck ex-reporter with the perfect mix of narrative precision and jaded idealism: two ingredients that are part and parcel of any effective film noir. The first-person narration by Roberts enhances the quality of the movie, and keeps us guessing on the real motive behind the crime.
Set in Palm Springs, everything about the setting in the movie progresses slowly as a metaphor for the theme of oppression: Asch (Roberts) is oppressed by his past; the police are oppressed by the rich residents of Palm Springs who treat them as servants; the rich, meanwhile, are oppressed by boredom (watch Johnny Depp's classic performance as the insightful rich kid who only wants to be loved...); the isolation of each character is omnipresent and is further augmented by the heat and isolation of the desert.
There is an audience for this film if they're looking for a more contemporary version of film noir. While there are elements of the film that might have been tighter, I recommend getting a copy of this film and putting it right between The Big Sleep and Chinatown in your movie library. (The film is based on the Arthur Lyons book, CASTLES BURNING, and if you like Roberts's acting in this one, you may want to get a copy of The Ambulance, in which he showcases his funnier, lighter side.) BEST LINE IN THE FILM: "Careful? Careful of what? I should've asked. Only fools ignore the strange warnings of trailer park ladies." -
Ex-reporter Jacob Asch (Eric Roberts) is hired by an acquaintance (Raymond J. Barry) to find his ex-wife and son. Asch heads to Palm Springs and quickly locates the ex Laine (Beverly D'Angelo) with someone he believes to be the son (a young Johnny Depp). But things turn out to be a bit more complicated as Asch discovers former white trash Laine has definitely married up in the form of millionaire Simon Fleischer (Dan Hedaya) and her first son is nowhere to be seen.
Director/writer Matthew Chapman is channeling BODY HEAT here and this mid-80s neo-noir is watchable enough thanks to an all-star cast and nice locations. D'Angelo was still looking good around this time, so she makes for a good femme fatale and isn't afraid to show some skin. However, the mystery isn't very compelling in the end. Co-starring Dennis Lipscomb, Emily Longstreth and Henry Gibson. Chapman made several thrillers in the 80s, but his "biggest" career achievement was co-authoring the screenplay for the infamous COLOR OF NIGHT. -
dj_bassett25 January 2005Apparently there's a lot of movies with that title, but this is the 1986 PI drama, with Eric Roberts and Beverly D'Angelo and a very young Johnny Depp in one of his earliest roles. In fact, it seems like some Depp collectors have paid up to forty bucks for this tape, just to see him. Which means I"ll end up auctioning this off, one of these days.
What was interesting for me is that this was based on a Arthur Lyons novel. I know a bit about hardboiled fiction: Lyons was a good, neglected PI novelist of the late Seventies and Eighties, well worth seeking out if you like the genre and happen to stumble across his books.
Roberts plays an ex-journalist turned PI who, desperately needing money, agrees to a job a friend of his offers him. Her boss, a famous artist, wants to reconcile with his ex-wife and son: he's heard a report that they may be in Palm Springs, and wants Roberts to check it out. Roberts does find the wife (D'Angelo) and a kid (Depp) who he thinks is the kid. Unfortunately it's not the kid, though. And then a whole bunch of things happen. Like many PI stories, this has the general structure of "my small meaningless investigation relates directly to a serious crime". There's also a real strong Ross Macdonald influence (if you know the writer), from "the rich living lives of quiet desperation" to "incidents in the present are reverberations of what happened in the past". I suspect that comes from the source material, though: this feels like a faithful adaptation.
It suffers partly because the bad guy is a non-established character who only really does anything in the final third of the movie, partly because D'Angelo's motivations become overly murky (I'm still not sure to what degree we're supposed to be sympathetic towards her.) But I did like how things defy expectations: the rich industrialist turns out to really love his kid, the loudmouthed artist turns out to really love his kid, the spoiled rich kid turns out to be having a hard time of it, the sympathetic victim isn't nearly so sympathetic or so much of a victim that you first think.
Not really a good movie, though. There's a lot of voice-over stuff, and it's pretty bad: I suspect it's taken directly from the novel, but it doesn't matter, it's still sounds pretty hokey. Beverly D'Angelo is not my idea of a femme fatale, sorry. I've always liked Eric Roberts, and he's not bad here, but he looks too slick and well-put together to play a down-on-his-luck journalist. The climax is over rushed: not only are D'Angelo's motives murky, so are the bad guy's -- I'm not sure exactly how he expected to get away with it, and why, given what we learn about him, he would even try this plan in the first place.
So a misfire. Better casting and a bit more meat on the bones of this script and it would've been a lot better. With Edward Bunker in a very small role as one of D'Angelo's servants. -
viktute1026 October 2014I think Matthew Chapman didn't do everything what he could to do for this movie. There really were some careless moments in the movie. Anyway, I liked Jacob's mysterious voice and that music which was wrapped in a shroud of mystery. Plot is not perfect, but it isn't very bad. Personally, I expected better film. Realistically, two or three times I threw a glance to the clock to see how much time of movie left. It's not a feature of very good film, as You all perfect know. Selected music was good, it fitted for the plot and film's mood. I didn't like at all one moment of the movie. That moment is when Simon Fleischer found Donnie's body. I didn't like it because Dan Hedaya was acting terribly and lamely! That's what I meant when I said that there were some careless moments. Second moment was when Laine Fleischer knew that it's over between her and Jacob. Other scenes were quite good. One more thing. Johnny Depp (don't forget that it was only third his role) was acting very good. It's sad, because there were only a few scenes with him. But it's not a problem. In spite of the fact that I said I expected better film, I tried to find the answers anyway. Indisputable fact is - the idea of the film is still good. There were quite a few twist. The last thing I want to say - Eric Roberts was acting surprisingly! I considered "How much points I have to give?" and "What does it mean "Slow burn"?". Now I have the answers: 1. Six points. 2. I won't say, because watch this film and then think about it. After a while probably You'll understand it.