Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Body Heat Blu-ray Movie Review

"You shouldn't wear a body like that"

Reviewed by Sir Terrence November 27, 2008

Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat is a neo-noir masterpiece in my opinion. It is not a film the MTV crowd will love, as much like Mirrormask, its story is told in a slow, sensuous way, where layers and layers of plot are revealed and twisted in a slow purposeful way. This movie is a fallback to the days of the 40’s and 50’s when film noir use to fill the screens at the local cinema, and is favorably compared to Billy Wilders 1944 classic “Double Indemnity”. It actually transcends it by adding more contemporary elements to the mix. It has all of the right ingredients of film noir, a dark, convoluted plot with many twists and turns, a sultry, smokey hot vixen, a dumb love/lust struck man, all put together with a fuzzy dream like, diffused and dusky visual background. Both the leading actors, Kathleen Turner and William Hurt turn in their best performances in this film, and Kasdan shows profound directorial maturity for his first time out. This movie lauched Kathleen Turner's career, and what a steamy start!

This movie is gritty, in your face, and subtle all at the same time. It is full of hyperbolic and often playful dialog which suggest a sensual and sexual energy between the couple that is quite hard to miss. Some of the acting is purposefully over the top to emphasize this energy and chemistry such as Hurt breaking a patio door window to get to Matty, and Matty practically throwing herself at him every time she sees him. Where you would find innuendo in film noir, you find direct, explicid sexuality here. Even the weather in the film (its always very hot, even at night) is used to convey open sexual innuendo that pulls these two character together. There are just tons of references to “heat” in this movie (even the title) all to support this profound sexual energy. For you true lovers of film noir, Kasdan is going to teach you a few new tricks in Body Heat.

Body Heat centers on the life of lowly attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt), an attorney not exactly at the top of his game, and a man who thinks with his lower extremities rather than using his brain. He encounters the gorgeous, steamy hot Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), and there is definitely some serious sexual chemistry there. The two are very attracted to each other, but Matty is married. Soon their tryst takes on another level, as the two begin plotting the murder of her rich husband (Richard Crenna) so Matty can claim his entire estate and Ned and herself can be together. Ned gets one of his more shady and sleazy clients, a bomb expert (Mickey Rourke), to help him cover up the crime. Once they kill the husband, things do not go exactly as planned. An unknown source begins feeding the District Attorney office with evidence. This starts the District Attorney Peter Lowenstein (Ted Dansen), and Police Detective Oscar Grace on their trail. Soon Ned realizes that he was being used, and that Matty is not was she appears to be, which sets up an unexpected ending (with a nuance that may be missed by most folks) that is as surprising as it is unexpected.

Body Heat Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Body Heat brings its highly stylish appearance to the Bluray format in the form of a 1080p/VC-1 encode framed at a 1:85:1 aspect ratio. One must understand the film noir style of filmmaking to honestly evaluate the picture quality of this film, as I have mentioned it is highly stylized and designed to create a certain mood. First, the print master looks in great condition, as I only saw one instance of a pop during the entire film. There were no speckles, spurious image noise, dirt or scratches to be found. Colors are muted, which makes brightly lit and daytime scenes more distinctive in contrast. Grain is apparent, but well managed with no signs of edge enhancement or DNR. Grain haters beware, this is real film, not video. Black levels are excellent and stable, though shadow detail is lacking at times which quite ironically fits this film well. Detail is outstanding with beads of sweat, skin textures, fine hair and even fine patterns in clothing all emerging quite clearly to the eye. Daylight scenes have this hazy, Vaseline over the lens quality, which gives it diffused character. This type of stylish look is exactly what film noir is all about.

Body Heat Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Body Heat comes in two audio flavors, a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD encode, and a lossy 5.1 Dolby Digital encoded at a constant bit rate of 640kbps. Once again, this movie is about the dialog and images, so there is no directional panning of effects to speak of. However, I found dialog always clean, clear, and easy to understand. John Barry's jazzy sax laced film score is very well recorded, and fits the mood of the film exceptionally well. While there is no panning of effects, some effects are expertly placed in the channels. The wind chime scene at Matty's house effectively illustrates this, with their sound emerging from pretty much everywhere. There is no LFE in this movie, which makes it a 5.0 movie instead of the listed 5.1. The lossy Dolby Digital track sounds less full, less expansive, and flat in comparison to the lossless track. Overall this soundtrack enhances the visuals with perfection, never drawing attention to itself, or taking away from the spoken word.

Body Heat Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The same extras you find on the 2006 Collectors Edition DVD are found on this disc as well. All extras are presented in standard definition video.

Lifted Scenes (9 minutes) are scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor to help maintain the pacing of the film. They are titled as "In the Backseat," "Stewardess," "Practice Run," "First Murder Attempt" and "After the Attempt."

Body Heat: The Plan (17 minutes) This featurette covers the casting of the film, and features the opinion and comments of Hurt, Turner, Ted Dansen, and Kasdan.

Body Heat: The Production (16 minutes) features more interviews with the cast and crew on the difficulties of shooting the film on location (it was really cold at a time when it should have been warm), the racy content, and key scenes in the movie. Additional commentary comes from DP Richard Kline, and Editor Carol Littleton.

Body Heat: Post Production (10 minutes) goes into the editing and scoring which leads up to the movies theatrical release. We are also treated with a conversation with John Barry, the film score composer.

Vintage interview (12 minutes) takes us on a flashback to 1981 with interviews from Hurt and Turner. You can plainly see that time has not been very friendly to Kathleen Turner.

Lastly we get a theatrical trailer in standard definition video

Body Heat Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a lover of film classics and very good film noir, this movie is a fine example of both. While more contemporary flavored than previous film noir productions of the 40's and 50's (hence the neo-noir distinction), Body Heat is more accessible and fresh, if not more in your face than previous offerings of this genre. This movie is powerful, well written, full of twists and turns, and has a surprising ending to boot. It features outstanding performances from its lead characters, which is essential to very good film noir. It however takes patience to view, something that this generation of viewers is just not accustom to. As such, this film will not appeal to everyone. I still have to highly recommend this movie for real lovers of film classics, as this is one outstanding film, and a must buy for the collector. Don't forget to click through the Bluray.com link to Amazon to purchase it. You will not be sorry, that is for sure.