A rather mysterious movie from Paul Thomas and Vivid, "Burn" appears to be a major film project, but since it was shot in 2004 but shelved until a 2008 release something definitely went wrong. I enjoyed its serious mood, but the movie seemed to fall apart halfway through, with missing scenes and very poor editing (almost random) and lack of continuity for the final scenes.
Jenna Jameson stars, and following "The Masseuse" (arguably her best film and among PT's best) she puts in a commendable acting performance. Pulling off the difficult trick of looking somewhat plain (hard for a superstar) with the help of dowdy costumes and wearing glasses, She even has a tough crying scene late in the show which was rather convincing. But her character suffers from porno necessity especially in the sex department as she steps way out of character as the show progresses.
Raven Touchstone's screenplay is evidently inspired by the wonderful James Spader/Maggie Gyllenhaal classic "Secretary" given outright imitation scenes in the office. It's a BDSM exercise, replete with master of the genre Ernest Greene in the cast (uncredited) as a BDSM novelist who also gets to do some flogging of Jenna.
She's hired as a reader by literary agent Justin Sterling (Jenna's real-life husband), and he's given to mistreating her at work, yet helping her (somehow) to overcome her mania of self-destruction, not cutting herself but instead burning herself with a cigarette (hence the movie's title).
She has a torrid affair with lesbian girlfriend Stephanie Swift (a bigger star in my book than Jenna ever was, quality-wise) and is introduced to the wonderful world of BDSM by Justin. When he and Greene take her to a kink party to celebrate Justin's signing author Greene, the movie comes to a halt to stage static bondage/fetish sex content at a private club.
Many, many big-name guest stars participate in the party scene, but the movie suffers as it becomes dead in the water. Most of this talent is wasted, especially Dee Williams in her previous career as fetish artiste named "Darling", just cast as a wide-eyed voyeuse who doesn't actually take part in the bondage or sex.
After the party, scenes head haphazardly to a plot twisty open ending that is quite unsatisfying. Either lots of scenes were cut in the four years of post-production, or key ones weren't shot at all.
The wackiest element here, which stopped me dead in my tracks right from the outset, is that non-actor Justin Sterling in the important male lead role looks remarkably like Anderson Cooper, right down to the hair, glasses and even his voice intonation. It's clearly all coincidence, but plays almost like a parody and who knows? In 2004 when this was shot Cooper was prominent with his TV series on CNN already.
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