William
Hurt, like bratwurst, unsweetened dark chocolate or kim chee, is an acquired
taste: you either like him or you don't. In fact, sometimes you don't like him
even when you do, like a food or a type of music you have to be in exactly the
right mood for. It doesn't help that most of the movies he's made in the last
ten years just have the stink of lousy to them.
But for about a decade there—Christ, he was good. Bill Hurt could take his bland good looks and turn the intelligence behind them on and off like a light switch, which meant he could play confused like nobody's business. In many ways, this made him the perfect lead actor in the '80s, where everything was confusing. He could play the smart guy confused by his own emotions (The Accidental Tourist, The Doctor) he could play the burnt-out drug guy confused by people and life (The Big Chill, I Love You To Death) or—and this is where I think I appreciate him most—he could play the smart guy who wasn't as smart as he thought he was but smarter than you thought he'd be.
It's this quality that makes Body Heat so watchable for me, even after all these years. Certainly, Hurt isn't Body Heat's only asset—there's that whip-smart script by writer-director Lawrence Kasdan which pulls most of its dramatic structure from Double Indemnity but is smart enough to give the dialogue and the updating a strong lean snap—I think he's the reason I can keep coming back to the film, every couple of years, and enjoying it each time.
Hurt plays Ned Racine, a lousy lawyer in a small Florida town who's only real purpose in life seems to be sleeping with as many women as possible, preferably those in uniform. All this changes when he meets Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) , a married woman from the wealthy neck of the woods. After some great initial flirting ("You're not very bright, are you?" Matty says to him at their first meeting. "I like that in a man." "Hey, stupid, horny, lazy, ugly—I got it all," he replies. She appraises him quickly and smiles. "You don't look lazy."), they start an affair that grows more and more passionate until, after finally meeting Matty's husband (Richard Crenna), they decide to kill Matty's husband and inherit his money.
That it all goes wrong from there won't be a surprise to anyone who's seen Double Indemnity (hell, it may not be a surprise to anyone who hasn't, James M. Cain has been swiped from so many times by now) but the pleasure of the film is in the details, particularly in Hurt's performance as, continually updated by his buddies, the town's prosecuting attorney (Ted Danson) and police detective (J.A. Preston), Ned realizes he's not two steps ahead of the game, he's three steps behind.
There's a lot of other stuff to like in Body Heat too; some clever staging, and some very good performances—I don't think Ted Danson has ever been better on the big screen (not saying much, I know) and Mickey Rourke has a small bit that shows just how much potential he'd go on to throw away—but for me, I don't think it gets any better than watching Ned Racine jog along the beach and light up a cigarette the instant he stops.
Oddly, I didn't really like Kathleen Turner's performance much. Once you get over how naked she gets, there's not much to her performance. She plays the role in a breathless sort of way, the sort of performance Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck used to give, which makes sense, I guess, but doesn't mesh with the rest of the film's contemporaneity. It's a shame because it could give the ending of the film a hell of a lot more wallop than it has. As it is, it's more like a pleasantly dazing blow to the head, putting Body Heat in the upper echelon, although not the very highest tier, of post-noir film noirs.
All written material on these pages is © 1998 by Jeff Lester. With the exception of non-profit distribution, all other rights are reserved.