In the middle of an oppressive heat wave, temperatures are not the only thing rising in a small south Florida town.  Local lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) encounters the unhappily married socialite Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) on one fatefully hot night.  It does not take long for passion to get the better of the two, but only one thing stands in their way: Edmund (Richard Crenna), Matty’s often-travelling businessman husband.  With their thoughts clouded by lust and hazy from the heat, the two lovers hatch a plan to kill Edmund so that they can enjoy not just each other, but the man’s rich inheritance which he will leave behind. 

Body Heat is the 1981 directorial debut of Lawrence Kasdan, who until that point had only worked as a screenwriter, but his influence on the industry was already well established.  His previous credits were with two of Hollywood’s most enduring franchises: Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981).  Working with a budget of half the size – an estimated $9million compared to Star Wars and Indiana Jones’ estimated $18million each – Kasdan crafted an erotic thriller that brings the themes and elements of noir our from the shadows and into the sultry color of hot Floridian nights. 

Kasdan’s direction is very solid, but the film is clearly the work of an expert screenwriter.  The way he builds tension between Ned and Matty against the world is a nice even turning on the screw that always leaves our main characters with a loose end to tie up quick lest they be caught.  What is most impressive about this script is that neither Matty nor Ned are very likable people by any stretch.  They do not even border on anti-hero status where the villain has some redeeming qualities; these are just two awful people who, somehow, in the pursuit of their own greed and gratification, became perfect for each other.  Their stop-at-nothing approach to life is magnetizing to say the least, and we can’t look away even for a second. 

Ned is strong, stubborn, and has an oafish handsomeness to him.  It does not take long for him to fall under Matty’s spell and soon he believes that he is the one who decided that her husband must die.  Kasdan’s script does a lot of work to make sure we end up rooting for Ned, but Hurt’s performance is not to be ignored, either.  We find ourselves sympathizing with him as he realizes that he is in over his head yet rooting for him as he stoops to new lows to cover his tracks and try to get away with his crimes. 

He does not do it alone though, because the film does not work until we are also captivated by Matty’s beauty and charm.  Turner is a true praying mantis in this, her stunning debut film role.  She brings eroticism, mystery, and intrigue into every scene and is the true key to unlocking Body Heat with the challenge of only having one chance to lure both us and Ned into her trap.  Early on, after she invites Ned back to her house to listen to the windchimes, she says her goodbyes to Ned. But as Ned discovers, she is staring back at him through the window.  She is not really looking at Ned, she is looking at us, tempting us, and it is at this point we know there is no turning back. 

Acting against them is police detective, Oscar Grace (J. A. Preston), a friend of Ned’s.  This friendship creates obvious tension, especially as he begins to uncover more and more clues about what happened to Matty’s husband.  There is a scene late in the film where Oscar almost has his finger on this whole case, and it is at this point that we see the true power of Kasdan’s script. We find ourselves in this morally strange situation as we have already become sympathetic towards Ned and want to see him succeed with his plans, but at the same time we want him brought in for justice.  

This is when we fully realize that Kasdan has been deconstructing the noir concepts all along.  Under the traditional guidelines of the genre, Body Heat would follow Oscar, always one step behind Ned and Matty on their self-destructive downward spiral.  Ned is not your typical entry point into these kinds of films; he is not a private eye or a gumshoe detective just following a case, he is not even that respectable of a lawyer.  While Matty has made her place in the hall of fame for femme fatales, Ned has walked willingly into her world with no sense of obligation or duty other than the following of his own follies.  Ned is far from a truly innocent party, but we cannot ignore the fact that he brought this all onto himself and it is in that that we can see through his crimes and discover his humanity.   

As the film concludes, and the true details of Matty and Ned’s dastardly plan becomes known, it is here that Kasdan’s otherwise expert script stumbles.  He tried to put just a little too much into the ending, and while everything he sets up over the course of his 113-minute thriller comes back into play, the reveals do not all land with the same impact.  Further, for a script so full of twists and fateful encounters, it never left the audience feeling very lost up until these final few scenes where it rushes towards the finish.  The ending is not ambiguous by any means, it just moves at a pace far faster than the reveals that came before it and does not allow us to fully process the information before moving on to the next reveal. 

These sins all play out in a hot, steamy, and very sweaty world that feels so real, yet dreamlike at the same time.  The sets and locations are full of stuff that gives the film a very lived in feel, but it never focuses on any detail that is not absolutely needed so we see it all through the haze of our peripheral.  This balancing act helps Body Heat feel like a fresh thriller and the action still holds up after 40 years.