lasttimeisaw
In the sultry Florida, an unusual heatwave parches its residents, Ned Racine (Hurt), a small-town lawyer, hooks up with a married woman, the drop-dead gorgeous Matty Walker (Turner, in her star- making silver screen debut), he irresistibly falls for her because it is the best sex he has ever had (extolled as one of the hottest moment ever on the celluloid), but is it vice versa? it will be open to debate to the chagrin of Ned in the end. Naturally, Matty is trapped in a dead-end marriage, she is the trophy wife of a filthy rich but sleazy businessman Edmund (Crenna), a murder plan is hatching up after Ned meets Edmund in person which cements his resolution to get rid of the scumbag once and for all (there is no sympathy to the rich hubby, the film firmly sticks to that route, even tactfully suggested by secondary characters, so as to intrigue audience to unconsciously side with Ned and Matty, notwithstanding the atrocious nature of their act), for the sake that he and Matty will be a happy ending, oh, he wishes!BODY HEAT is Lawrence Kasdan's director debut, who was the young and upcoming screenwriter behind two blockbusters STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES (1980) and RIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) at that time, the film transposes a femme fatale story, more specifically, akin to Billy Wilder's film-noir apotheosis DOUBL INDEMNITY (1944), to a sexually simulating template of a modern world, which would be unthinkable during the Production Code era, and unerringly keeps the twist up its sleeve until the very end, while leaving little hints every so often after the ill- fated husband has been successfully dispatched.The story is exclusively told from Ned's angle, so Matty is portrayed in the most gratifying way, being objectified as a damsel-in-distress with a provocative sex appeal ("do you want to lick it?"), and not just Ned, viewers as well, wants to believe he is her white knight thanks to the deceptive conviction of her perfection, from Ned's viewpoint, everything he has done so far is on a voluntary basis up until the forgery scheme pops out, Matty's perfect image is tainted with her greediness, but that is not the most alerting signal, a waking-up call is that she actually pulls the scheme off, as much as it looks like a windfall, what if it is not? It is just unthinkable that he is outsmarted and manipulated by a bimbo, not in this patriarchal society.It certainly gives Ned a nasty feeling to realise that he has been an unwitting pawn from day one, he is neither a natural force of masculine seduction, nor a well-endowed lover who can both mentally and sexually conquer the object of his desire, he is chosen simply on account of his job, which in fact, he is not very good at; more horrifyingly, he is expendable, that's where lies the cleverness of this otherwise well-anticipated script, Matty's last word to Ned is that she loves him in spite of everything, and as artificial as it sounds initially, if we look back afterwards, we tend to believe she actually means it, that's the exact reason why she doesn't kill him, the only thing she didn't plan beforehand is that she loves him, maybe not to a great extent that she is willing to divulge all her secrets, but she has a soft spot for him, which justifies the tip-off from the arsonist (Rourke, in his very early role, seen in merely two scenes), she does it intentionally, so that Ned can be forestalled, so it would only leave her to detonate the explosion (with an accentuated cue of being delayed for a few seconds), that's why the second murder plan, which looks like a lazy writing job at first, is actually a meticulously schemed escape plan by Matty, to frame Ned as the scapegoat and get rid of the only one who knows her real identity.The plan is so audacious and prone to high risk, it could've been much easier if she were cruel enough to leave Ned as a "dead" scapegoat, two bodies, two suspects would be gone in flames, it could be plan A to earn a clean slate. Matty is the ultimate femme fatale, unlike Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, she will not let herself fall prey of sentimentality, which doesn't imply that she is a callous monster, on the contrary, Ned's fate effectively if implicitly corroborates otherwise, she can relent as long as it doesn't hinder the eventual outcome, it is up to Kasdan's sharply ambivalent characterisation makes Matty so vividly entrancing, embodies mystery, danger and empowerment.Also widely praised for creating a sweaty, sizzling and misty environment in the winter time, for Hurt and Turner's utterly professional commitments, (however Ted Danson is unheralded as Ned's lawyer friend Peter, who exudes a tangible bromance, which unassumingly contrasts the mercurial game Ned is involved, and who says there are no true friends among members of the bar? Not to mention his improvised dance moves, one time, he is reduced into the upper-left corner of the frame, but still he rocks!) BODY HEAT confidently lives up to its reputation in a genre notorious for its gratuitous nudity exploitation and shoddy story development, a rare breed which does't leave a sense of guilty pleasure for being so diverting and erotic.
blazesnakes9
Now, I have to admit something. I do enjoy watching movies that consists on film-noir style. I really do. Like anyone else, I do have my own favorite batch of genres that I like to watch on my own. My favorite genres are action, crime/gangster, science-fiction and western. But, film-noir or neo-noir pictures are essentially one of my personal and favorite one of all. Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote both Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, written and directed a movie of his own. The name of it? Body Heat. The movie takes place in Florida during an endless, steamy heat wave. Ned Racine (William Hurt), is a seedy lawyer, who can't seem to get his hands off of his female clients. He's the kind of guy that someone would call a sleazeball, yet you know, Ned is a sleazy man, who can't seem to stop doing what he does best. One night, he runs across an beautiful brunette, Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner, in her first movie role) during a outdoor concert. At first, Walker doesn't buy Ned's womanizing tactics and even after her refusal, Ned continues to see her, even though her husband is away. Soon enough, Ned and Matty began to start a steamy and somewhat erotic affair between the both of them. Then, Matty tells Ned that she is planning to kill her rich husband so that she can collect all of the money. Walker's husband, Edmund, (Richard Crenna) soon comes home and doesn't seem to notice the ongoing relationship between Matty and Ned. But, the movie does get interesting when Ned finds himself getting in way over his head about falling in love with Matty. The plot leads to a series of corruption, betrayal and even suspicion when a private investigator suspects that someone kills Edmund. The surprising interest that ignites this movie is the relationship between Ned and Matty, between William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Their sex scenes are truly well-shot and also very erotic in its own right. Another criticism that I have about the movie is Kathleen Turner. She definitely stole the movie away from all of the other supporting actors. During the whole time when I was watching Body Heat, I was reminded of other femme-fatales that were erected straight out from other 1940's film-noir classics like Double Indemnity, The Asphalt Jungle and Out of the Past. Turner does resembled a lot like a modern femme-fatale of the 80's. The one thing that all femme-fatales have in common that I certainly did see in Kathleen Turner is the lips. Her lips have a red-hot flare to them. Every time a light shimmers over her lips, I was reminded of those 1940's femme-fatales. In fact, Double Indemnity and Out of the Past, the two movies that I mentioned above, were the two movies that were inspired to make Body Heat. But, getting back on Kathleen Turner's performance. She's beautiful to look at and she is also smart in the way that her character can easily manipulate Ned by convincing him to go along with her murder plot. As for the eroticism of this movie, I have to say that it really is convincing and it is sexy. One of the high points in this movie is when Ned looks through the window at Matty and he can't control his lust about her. So, he takes a chair and throws it through the glass window and walks up to her and start kissing her. That is just about as sexy as a movie can go. If you think about it, it isn't played for dirtiness. It isn't trash. It's a neo-noir picture of the 80's. For its time, Body Heat was shocking when it first came out and even today, it is ranked as being one of the best erotic thrillers ever made. In fact, I think that Body Heat helped inspired other neo-noir films of its kind like Blood Simple or The Last Seduction, which was film-noir for the 90's. Furthermore, Kasdan himself feared that he would never make another picture in his career. Lucky for him, his career did expanded with other pictures like The Big Chill and the western Sliverado. His screenplay crackles with high-voltage energy and with star-making performances by Turner and Hurt. Hurt himself is also very convincing as the seedy lawyer who doesn't know what he is getting himself into. Kasdan's direction is also great. He knows how a scene works by letting the characters and the actors talk and communicate through dialogue that literally breaks through like glass. Body Heat proves to be, once again one of the best erotic thrillers ever made. It is well-paced, well-directed with excellent performances by Hurt and Turner and it is one of the films of 1981. Suspenseful and sexy. ★★★★ 4 stars.
