'Body Heat' is a thriller assembled out of three standard plot elements, each common ways that story-tellers can allow their characters to lose everything, and be complicit in the process. There's the con-trick (in which a character is presented a scenario in which someone else is the loser, and doesn't realise that they are actually intended as the real fall-guy); the honey-trap, where a character is lured into stupidity by sex; and the rabbit-in-the-hat, where a last minute revelation changes everything. Going on this, it's clear that the film is not especially original; but some movies, like 'The Sting', or the works of David Mamet, are similarly composed and are highly entertaining. But 'Body Heat', in spite of some pretensions, never really pulls it off. The film's first phase, in which Kathleen Turner's super-bitch (sadly one of Hollwood's least endearing but most enduring stereotypes) seduces William Hurt's shifty lawyer, is ludicrously over-steamy and also a stagey, slow-moving affair. Most crucially, it fails to make you care about either character, so that the rest of the film feels merely like an extended exercise in plot exposition, the broad thrust of the movie is far too clearly telegraphed so the viewer is left watching simply to see which possible twists have actually been chosen to achieve the necessary overall effect. And the final surprise is actually quite irrelevant, an-after-the fact discovery that makes little actual difference given that, by this time, the villain of the piece has already got away. Which is a shame, as had Hurt's character been partly sympathetic, and with a less contrived plot, this could have been a strong tale of hope, disillusion and betrayal. What's left is a film that thinks its sexy and smart, but is actually just distasteful and dull. Incidentally, the film also reminds one quite how ghastly early 1980s ideas of style actually were.
Review of Body Heat
