Slow Burn

Beach blends all the performing styles smoothly: LL's blithe coolness, Blalock's sultry ambiguity, Liotta's slow-boiling intensity, Ejiofor's dapper amiability, Phifer's brooding intensity.

What results are surprises without sustenance.

The sort of cheesy thriller that would prove mildly diverting on late-night cable, Slow Burn at least features a terrific cast to enliven its familiar elements.

A veritable rip-off of 1995's "The Usual Suspects," Beach's crime caper not-so-subtly apes Bryan Singer's use of multiple red herrings and flashback-heavy interrogation scenes, but lacks the stylistic flair and sophisticated narrative skills to pull off a similar feat of cinematic intrigue.

Shelved for over a year, this incompetent mystery thriller stops periodically so some character or other can deliver an expository speech and pull the plot back on track, but by the end the story has turned into a hair ball.

For all it does right, there's something seriously wrong.

The cast, particularly Liotta, walk around with befuddled expressions on their faces, perhaps wondering what on earth they’re doing in this movie and how they can find a new agent ASAP.