Body Heat

A modern remake of the 1940s film, "Double Indemnity," this movie has a solid, large fan base of its own. That's justifiable, too, because this is well done.

It sports a 1940s-type film noir soundtrack but the rest is purely 1980s. By that, I mainly mean nudity and profanity, although the language isn't that offensive.

Kathleen Turner plays a femme fatale, similar to Barbara Stanwyck's role with Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity," except with a different ending. Actually, the entire story is quite different from the classic film noir. William Hurt has MacMurray's male lead role. I liked the classic actors better but Turner and Hurt shine with their performances, too.

This is steamy movie to say the least. Set on hot, humid Florida summer nights, you can almost feel the heat coming out from the TV screen and the heat from the two leads going at it several times. Turner is excellent as a woman who will go to great lengths for money, as they sometimes do. (Hey, my 87-year-old father is dating a 24-year bimbo in Florida, so I know of where I speak.)

The story is divided into three segments: (1) the setup; (2) the romance and plotting of the crime and (3) the crime and unraveling of Hurt as things begin to go very wrong.

An intriguing film, this loses nothing with multiple viewings. It's always interesting. The more I watched this, the more I found - as the case frequently is - myself fascinated with some of the lesser characters such as Hurt's two friends, played by Ted Danson and J.A. Preston. Danson, by the way, gives us a preview of the amoral character he played later in the hit TV series, "Cheers."

This is the kind of film you snuggle up with someone on a cold winter night. It will warm you up as much as your partner!

Body Heat: 9 out of 10: Many successful movies lose their ability to shock over the years. After hundreds of copy cats Alien isn't as effective as when it first came out. Kramer vs. Kramer certainly isn't the shocking eye opener it once was.

Body Heat should suffer the same fate. It doesn't. Despite a hundred direct to video takes on the same story (six of them with the exact same title) the movie still works. In fact it works very well indeed.

Writer Lawrence Kasdan had just penned Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back so it is a surprise he chooses noir for his first directing outing. (His next film was The Big Chill so this is one guy hard to pigeonhole) He both updates and in many ways upgrades the noir of the past.

By setting the movie in a Podunk Florida town he invokes John D Macdonald the way no Macdonald movie treatment has successfully done. His then unknown actors William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are pitch perfect.

This is a movie that really brings some new things to the table as it does some old things very well indeed. Like the best noir you are too involved to even begin to try to guess the next twist and turn.

Like Scorsese in Goodfellas or Huston in the Maltese Falcon Kasdan's directing is obviously very good yet his tricks remain hidden from view. Not a wasted shot and your television will sweat from all the heat generated.

Highly recommended to all fans of noir or simply fans of movies.

Undoubtedly one of the great film noir thrillers in history. Derivative but superbly stylised by director Kasdan and wonderfully realised by Hurt and Turner.

Hurt is a very great actor. He had a string of well played roles in the '80s (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Children of a lesser god, Gorky Park) but his movie career lost momentum after that. Perhaps it's difficult for a cerebral actor like him to find challenging parts. Turner is super sexy, proving that a voluptuous figure or great facial features are not essentials to be a turn on. I hear that Body Heat was her first film. She plays her role with understated confidence.

The underrated theme music too is very good. Supporting cast is effective. Really no faults with this movie. Kasdan did an accomplished job. One can't help but be disappointed that he did not make many more good movies.

Some leading critics complain that the ending was over elaborate. I disagree. I think the ending touch works well with the atmosphere and momentum of the movie towards the end. This being a genre film noir movie, the plot is typical and familiar to almost anyone, but it still has great power and the movie irresistibly sucks the viewer in. You can't but help but admire the skills of the actors and Kasdan's sophisticated direction. The music is marvelously complimentary all the way through.

Great stuff.

Like Polanski's "Chinatown" from a few years earlier, or the more recent "L.A. Confidential", "Body Heat" can be regarded as an example of neo-noir, a film which uses modern cinema techniques while trying to capture the spirit of the classic films noirs from the forties and fifties. The plot- an unfaithful wife conspiring with her lover to murder her husband- was a noir staple, being used in "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Indeed, "Body Heat" is sometimes described as a remake of "Double Indemnity"- in my view inaccurately, as there are major differences between the plots of the two films. Although films noirs such as "Double Indemnity" frequently had plots which revolved around sexual passion, the moral climate of the forties and the Production Code meant that this had to be implied rather than shown explicitly on the screen. By the eighties the moral climate had become more liberal, which meant that neo-noir films could be far more explicit than their predecessors.

Matty Walker, the unhappily-married younger wife of a wealthy and successful but unsympathetic Florida businessman, becomes involved with Ned Racine, a local lawyer, and they begin a passionate affair. (There are several love scenes between William Hurt and Kathleen Turner). They plot together to murder Matty's husband Edmund in order to inherit his money. Racine, as played by William Hurt, is arrogant, swaggering and cocky. He is ambitious but lazy, a man of both dubious competence and dubious ethical standards, who keeps equally dubious company. (His associates include Mickey Rourke's arsonist). He likes to think that he is always in control of the situation, but in reality he can be easily manipulated by Matty, a classic noir femme fatale. This was Kathleen Turner's first film, but she gives a remarkably assured performance as the glamorous and seductive Matty. (To be fair, Barbara Stanwyck was equally seductive in "Double Indemnity"- an even more remarkable performance when one considers that Stanwyck, unlike Turner, did not have the assistance of nudity or sex scenes).

In the second half of the film, the plot becomes increasingly complex and difficult to follow; there is a particularly implausible final twist (which I will not reveal). Nevertheless, film noir is a genre in which atmosphere is often more important than plot ("The Big Sleep" is a good example). The same holds true for neo-noir, and "Body Heat" is a highly atmospheric film. The adjective "steamy" is often used metaphorically to mean "sexually explicit", but this film can also be described as steamy in the literal sense. The title refers to the fact that Matty is said to have a natural body temperature of 100 Fahrenheit rather than the normal 98.4 (something which doubtless explains her sexual insatiability). It also refers to the fact that the action takes place during a heatwave. The atmosphere is one of extreme heat, of sweat, of physical lassitude, of moral decay and of sexual tension, an atmosphere heightened by John Barry's mournful and highly evocative jazz score. Many scenes take place at night, and director Lawrence Kasdan succeeds in giving these a look equivalent to the classic noir look. Instead of the moody black-and-white photography characteristic of noir, Kasdan uses in these scenes a colour scheme dominated by blacks, reds and oranges, something which emphasises the feelings of heat and passion.

"Body Heat" was made in the same year as the Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice", and the two films were often regarded as evidence of a trend in Hollywood towards a franker treatment of erotic subjects during this period. It seemed that the eighties were going to be the decade of the erotic thriller. That was not quite how things worked out in reality; the arrival of AIDS in the middle of the decade led to a revived moralism in the film industry so far as sex was concerned (although not necessarily so far as violence was concerned), and the levels of eroticism seen in "Body Heat" became the exception rather than the rule in the mainstream cinema. (There were a number of so-called "erotic thrillers" in the early nineties, most of which seemed to star either Tanya Roberts or Shannon Tweed, but these were films which concentrated much more upon erotica than they did on thrills, little more than softcore porn with a plot). The result is that "Body Heat" today seems as much of a period piece as "Double Indemnity" or "The Big Sleep". It remains, nevertheless, an effective piece of cinema. 7/10

Writer/director Kasden got just about everything right in this his first feature. The dialogue crackles as befits a neo noir and John Barry's score is always there to to support or promote some wondrous visuals. Kathleen Turner is quite astonishing in this her first film. Her boldness and bravery in the sex scenes ensure that this sizzles from the off and I guess helps to draw attention away from what is really going on. William Hurt hasn't made many films before this and he too seems very relaxed and easy with regard to the nude and non nude sequences. His banter with his colleagues is as believable as his smouldering tete-a-tetes with his co-star. Mickey Rourke is effective in a key small role and the whole thing moves very well. Having seen this upon its original theatrical release, I have always held it in high regard, feeling upon this Blu-ray viewing that it didn't quite race throughout as I had 'remembered' and there seemed to be a slight imbalance on the sound. But hey - excellent film with fine performances.