A movie culled from the decades-old ashes of film noir and the early novels of James Cain. Unlike the Rafelson remake of Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, this is done in modern dress, though it doesn't achieve, by that, any more of a modern feel. Apart from its show-offy frankness as to sexual word and deed, it is above all -- and very much like Postman -- a stodgily old-fashioned movie, a treasure chest of received ideas: the femme fatale, the oppressive husband, the "one big score," the animalistic and addictive sex, the relentless jaws of fate. The desire to be the new James Cain scarcely seems a true aspiration for writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, who, for instance, in his script for Continental Divide seems equally as happy to try his hand at being the new Garson Kanin or new Norman Krasna or new someone. Both these movies come across as mere stylistic exercises with no sense of conviction or purpose anywhere to be found. Body Heat, to be sure, is a stylistic exercise as much visually as verbally. And Kasdan has coming to him at least the minimal tribute one must pay to any director who seems genuinely to care how his movie looks, and who has the skill, the wherewithal, and/or the cinematographer to get it to look that way (in Richard Kline, he definitely has the cinematographer). The fairly strong visual interest, unfortunately, starts to slacken, to become repetitive, to seem all out of proportion to the obvious and inevitable plot, long before that plot has played itself out. William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, and Mickey Rourke. (1981) — Duncan Shepherd