Review of Body Heat (1981) by Robert D — 18 Apr 2011

I really enjoyed this film, a neo-noir with a great sense of humor. It straddles a delicate but rewarding line between parody and pastiche and dares to imagine a more contemporary (to the time period, of course) rendition of the classic movement.

William Hurt is absolutely electric as Ned Racine, a real sleazeball who, in his own head, comes off like a modern day Humphrey Bogart. However, Kasdan carefully constructs his narrative as an inside joke between the film's diegesis and his audience, so that we're laughing at Racine but with the movie.

The dialogue is poetry; it lifts its style from noir tropes but it's given the liberty to be far more graphic and sexual. In fact, it's the kind of dialogue that's become so popular but so hard to master today.