Body Heat (1981)

I love this movie so much

Simply A Masterpiece

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is one of those movies that fell though the cracks. I couldn't find it ever on a big screen, retrospectives you know. I refused to see it on TV for the first time. Sunday night, finally, I saw it in a huge plasma screen. Wow! I can immediately tell why people consider it a remake of Double Indemnity but unlike Gus Van Sant who remade Psycho shot by shot and casts Vince Vaugh as Norman Bates in a massive piece of miscalculation, or Jonathan Demme who remade Charade as The Trouble With Charlie and casts Mark Whalberg in the Cary Grant role, Mark Whalberg! In "Body Heat" Lawrence Kasdan casts William Hurt in the Fred Mac Murray part of the insurance salesman falling into the trap, body and soul. William Hurt's phenomenal performance reinventing the character makes "Body Heat" unique and without precedent. The power of Kathleen Turner - bursting into the film scene with a bang! - it's a masterpiece of characterization. She's way ahead of William Hurt. "You're not very intelligent, are you? I like that in a man" Superb.

When it comes to these femme fatale type of movies, the formula has become very familiar now. However when this film first came out, it was pretty cleverly executed. I think this is one of the films that inspired the creation of other seductive woman type characters in films that know what they want and know how to play the game. The the story takes place during the summer in Florida when it's going through a heatwave. A woman temps a lawyer with her sexiness and manipulates him to kill her rich husband. So they can take off with his money by legally taking it all by using the legal system. From there are the choices the characters make really start to bite them in the butt. While you as an audience is trying to figure out exactly what is going on and what the main plan that is being utilized is. This is a film for adults and I don't mean that because of the sexual content. But because this is a slow burn movie that will bore most teenagers. Overall, I have seen these types of movies before so the ending was quite predictable for me. But I appreciate it for what it accomplished and brought forth at that time. Plus another femme fatale film came out a year later called "Basic Instinct". Which will be a bigger hit because of Sharon Stone and because of a certain scene with her in it.7.6/10

Ned Racine (William Hurt) is a small seedy lawyer in Florida. It's a searing heatwave. He picks up Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). She's married to wealthy businessman Edmund (Richard Crenna), and a passionate affair ensues. She wants to leave Edmund but there's a prenup. So they hatch a plot to kill him.The is one sweaty movie. It is one of the best modern noir. It has all the styles of noir from first time director Lawrence Kasdan who also wrote the screenplay. It takes all the components of the old noir genre and adds the explicit sexuality of newcomer Kathleen Turner. It is very effective. It pushes the genre to new heights.

BODY HEAT is all about the mood. It's a film that makes you shuffle and sweat as you watch, set as it is in the searing Florida heat. In all other respects, it's a classic film noir that harks back to the movies of yesteryear in which a mismatched couple embark on a torrid affair. What follows involves murder, double-crossing and more passionate embraces than you can shake a stick at.While I found this film mildly enjoyable, I felt throughout that I'd already seen it in the same year's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. In addition, I thought the Nicholson film was better: more characterisation for a start, and a more engaging plot. Try as I might, I just couldn't warm to either William Hurt or Kathleen Turner in this film, although the always underrated Richard Crenna puts in a nice turn as Turner's husband.There's some good plotting here, some well directed scenes and decent twists, but I never got emotionally involved with what I was watching. And that's what it always comes down to, for me; my enjoyment of a movie depends on how far I can get involved in it. With BODY HEAT, I never forgot I was watching a film.