Metacritic reviews

Body Heat is good enough to make film noir play like we hadn't seen it before.

An excellent crime drama in the style of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Dashiell Hammett.

Kasdan's moody tribute to cinema's dark past set a gold standard for neo-noirs that has seldom been equaled.

Aside from the over abundance of rather large glasses and sweaty actors, Body Heat succeeds fabulously, not only as an excellent example of a classic film noir but as a solidly executed production in its own right.

While Body Heat involves murder, fraud, a weak hero led astray and a seductive, double-dealing broad, it also incorporates something new: a sexual explicitness that the old films could only hint at.

Still regarded as one of the steamiest movie's of all time, Body Heat is a fantastic exponenet of how noir has developed.

Lawrence Kasdan's 1981 noir fable is highly derivative in its overall conception, but it finds some freshness in its details. All in all, this evokes the spirit of James M. Cain more effectively than the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice did.

Body Heat is full of meaty characters and pungent performances...a film to be seen at a drive-in, on a heavy summer night, with someone you trust.

Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat--an homage to film noir--gets off to a nice start before it becomes entangled in its convoluted and somewhat uninteresting plot machinations.

Hurt is so good at capturing the charming and chilling Ned that he almost makes up for the film's two primary weaknesses: Kasdan's inexperience and a message of significant unpleasantness. [28 Aug 1981, p.P17]