Better Late Then Never

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Perfect proof that great movies are made by accident- because Body Of Evidence was no accident, it was somebody's plan A. Someone actually thought this movie was a million dollar idea,f*cking Christ. So many talented and dynamic actors wasted in one movie- Dafoe, Mantegna, Moore, Prochnow, Langella. Wasted so self-important Madonna can be a big movie star, wasted! Wow, leave it to Madonna to make sex boring. If Madonna is a feminist icon, I would say that the women of the world have truly been cheated. Feminists, you can do better than Madonna, literally every woman in the world is a more suitable feminist icon than Madonna. This is some of what the world is made of.

Whoever it was who told Madonna she could act did a great disservice to humankind. So unfortunate are we who have to sit through one of her movies. If any movie she was in had any potential to be good her incompetent acting would ruin it. Body of Evidence, alas, had no potential of being any good. Madonna didn't ruin it because there was nothing worth ruining. Everything about the movie is terrible. Even so, Madonna's pathetic acting sticks out like a sore thumb. She is so awful that it distracts from how awful everything else in the movie is. But put Madonna aside for a moment and note how terrible the movie's plot is, how laughably bad the dialogue is, how wretched the performances of the rest of the cast are. This is a movie of no redeeming value. There is nothing about it you can point to as being even competently done, much less well done. Madonna plays a woman accused of murder. The murder weapon? Her body. She is accused of fornicating a man to death. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. Willem Dafoe plays her lawyer. The movie follows the murder trial, the courtroom scenes exceeded in their stupidity only by the bedroom scenes. There is nothing even remotely believable about anything that goes on in this movie. The story is much too dumb to be at all compelling. The performances from Dafoe and some other notable faces such as Joe Mantegna and Julianne Moore leave much to be desired. Of course compared to Madonna everyone else in the movie looks like Olivier and Hepburn. Everyone, except Madonna who clearly has no shame, must be ashamed they were ever involved with this movie. Spare a thought for director Uli Edel. After the acclaimed Last Exit to Brooklyn this turkey was his followup. It basically ended his career. In the movie Madonna's character wrecks lives. Seems Madonna caused one real-world casualty as well.

Those three words seem to run through most of the reviews for this title, yet still it maintains its very low 4.1 average rating. It's probably one of the best of the exploitative, sleazy erotic thrillers of the 90's. That's not high praise, but it also places it quite far away from the worst films ever made.The weakest link in the film - and maybe the one responsible for much of its bad reputation is Madonna. Having tried her might at several mediocre comedies, Madonna chose this thriller as her first serious role, and she doesn't quite make it. Her acting isn't quite horrible - but she's clearly trying to channel the femme fatales of the classic Film Noirs, and placing herself in the same category as the likes of Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich and Kim Novak, she's nowhere near good enough. It's also not as good as her previous femme fatale role on Dick Tracy, which was just self-aware and campy enough to work. But Body of Evidence takes itself too seriously for Madonna's performance to pass. Surprisingly, she isn't even good enough at being sensual and seductive, making the sexual scenes quite awkward (as lovely as it is to see so much of Madonna's skin, that is).But surprisingly, most of the other scenes work quite well. Willem Dafoe and Joe Mantegna are good enough as the rival lawyers to make the courtroom scenes very effective, and as a courtroom drama alone (paying as little mind as possible to Madonna's scenes) it's well written, well acted and quite entertaining. Julianne Moore is good in her few short scenes as Dafoe's wife, and much of the supporting cast is also solid. All of these make it an entertaining enough thriller, filled to the brim with clichés but still managing to hold a little punch at the end. It's by no means a great film but it's also not that bad.

I read someone compare this to a bad episode of Law & Order and that about sums up my feelings on this movie. The erotic relationship between Willem Dafoe and Madonna is completely unwarranted, and the way their relationship develops is kind of unbelievable and cheap. The plot-line is weak and the revolving mystery is more so; however, it is clear that the film attempts to achieve much more than engross one in an underwhelming plot. At its core Body of Evidence is a late night soft-core porn mystery/drama. Juliane Moore's portrayal of Sharon Dulaney was the only mildly provocative aspect of the film. The storyline is incidental to a mildly pornographic coupling of two mildly unattractive people.The acting is sub-par and Madonna musters what she can to pull off...well... herself - the only role she ever plays in films. An argument could be made that the film's cinematography was its only redeeming quality. Debuting at the height of Madonna's Erotica period, I don't doubt why she decided to make this film, but I do doubt why the director, the actors, the producers, and everyone else involved thought this would be a good film to make. It serves as little more than a promo for this particular period of Madonna's career.