Slow Burn
Minnie Driver produces and stars in this sometimes unusual but largely  familiar and undercooked crime thriller, a project seemingly aimed at hardening  her good-girl image with a touch of the femme fatale. She plays Trina, the  surviving daughter of a couple who spent their lives searching the Mexican  desert for a fortune in lost diamonds. What a shock when a pair of escaped  convicts (James Spader, chewing on an accent that could make him Ratso Rizzo's  long-lost son, and Josh Brolin) stumble onto her camp, dragging the treasure  behind them. Completely obsessed with the diamonds, she turns ruthless in her  pursuit--these boys are rank amateurs next to Driver's hardened schemer.  Director-cowriter Christian Ford carves the film out of sharp, sun-blasted  colors that seem to bleach out over the course of the film, but the script's  blatant echoes ofTreasure of the Sierra MadreandGreed(including characters named after author Frank Norris andGreedprotagonist McTeague) never allow the film to establish its own identity. Brolin  turns in a fine performance as a holy innocent on the wrong path, and Stuart  Wilson is excellent as the narrator and Trina's desert-rat protector, an  ambiguous, dangerous figure always on the periphery of the story. The story  concludes in a clever climax of dark irony, but the rest of the film is less  satisfying--not quite predictable but never very surprising.--Sean  Axmaker