mine's 2/10 - yep it was as dodgy as the majority of people with an opinion suggest - sadly there's no charm at all, so it's not a "so bad it's good movie" - it's just bad.
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I gave it a 6 out of 10 for its trash appeal.
shareI gave it a solid 7/10 because it was a well done erotic thriller. Usually you either have a good thriller with pathetic or no sex scenes or you have a sex flick with beatutiful actors and steamy sex scenes but lame stories and poor story telling. This is one of the rare movies where you can have both. And Madonna's acting is quite good actually, most people just fail to see beyond the nudity.
shareIts not that bad, ive since worse, and i recall a number of so called erotic thrillers bounding about in the early part of the 90s that are far worse than Body of Evidence, it was just a shame that the release of this film, early 1993,things were still pretty raw with the backlash regarding her SEX book, and her sexy album, Erotica, as one reviewer at the time stated " talk about overkill, enough already! "
As Willem Dafoe said in an interview, the film wasnt really given a chance as the critics were already sharpening their claws due to her SEX book, and there were too many critics comparing the film to Basic Instinct.
For me i'll give it a 6 as it does exactly what it sets out to do and i think Madonna is quite good in it, not wanting to start a " how dare you " thread but she is SO much more convincing when she is being a total bitch, in the last 10 minutes with the whole " thats what i do, i *beep* " scene, she is very good.
" the dreams of youth, are the regrets of maturity " Legend
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As it is? Barely a 2 out of 10.
If they had cast an actress in the lead role (instead of a singer who can't act and also can't sing), this could have been one of the best crime movies of the 90s, and thus a 9 or 10 out of 10.
I really disagree with all the people who say this is a dumb story that is badly written and all that.
The direction is good, the dialog is excellent, and it has a load of truly great actors (with Willem Dafoe somehow looking younger than he did years earlier in To Live and Die In L.A.).
The problem is the casting of Madonna in the lead role. It isn't just that she isn't a good actor, it transcends that; it sounds like a wooden reading from a person who isn't trying to act and doesn't understand what they are reading or where the emphasis goes (see Keanu Reeves). It isn't just that Madonna can't act, either. If she were the greatest actress of all time, this movie still would not work. Madonna wasn't NEARLY young enough or beautiful enough to be the femme fatale here. Be serious, any toothpaste commercial has three women who are prettier than she is. Worse, the (presumably homely) wife who loses her husband to this serial homewrecker/murderer is played by Julianne Moore, who, at the time this was made, was approximately 800,000 times better looking than Madonna!
The obvious comeback to this from Madonna fans is that Madonna didn't have to be flawlessly physically the most beautiful woman in the world, that she was really hot at the time because of some trashy coffee table book that nobody bought, but uh-uh, I don't buy into that at all, not whatsoever. Films should be timeless. For example, making a movie right now in 2009 starring non-actor Jon Gosselin as a stud ladies man because he is hot in the media right now would be ludicrous, no woman in her right mind would even look at that guy twice, much less be seduced by him.
I just watched The Landlord (1970). Talk about dated, every issue touched on in the movie is all but irrelevant now and really speaks only to the times (the end of the 60s), but still, that film is a masterpiece all the way around, enthralling to watch, and it teleports you back to that time and place for two hours. That is just like a WWII movie, it takes you back there, you don't have to be physically frightened by the Nazis today in order to feel the movie.
Usually a great acting performance can only come from two or more great actors reacting off each other in a scene, a bad one simply can't be in the mix, but not so here, Willem Dafoe does amazing acting in great scenes against a female lead who might as well be a cardboard box.
A bizarre twist here is that she kept at this unthinkable movie career even after this dog and Shanghai Surprise (which singlehandedly defined bad cinema) and, years later, did Evita, a movie in which her acting was pretty good and her singing was great. I got roped into seeing it and was amazing.
Anyhow, the casting of Madonna in the lead role skews the entire production into the "what were they thinking" zone. It pulls the whole thing into the trash.
As a cop/legal drama, this is actually very good, and fairly accurate. The only glaring flaw I saw in it was when Joe Mantegna starts doing the opening statement for the trial. I was puzzled thinking, "Why is the police detective doing the opening?", only to realize that it was the other way around, that he was the prosecuting attorney.
In 999 out of 1,000 real cases, the DA doesn't interrogate the suspects nor go to the crime scene when a dead body is found. The police department does all that.
In serious cases that are sure to lead to a lengthy trial, it is common for the DA to have meetings with the police detectives to review statements and evidence, but in most cases, the DA has never even met the detectives before the trial, they only read their reports.
Once in the courtroom, it was pretty good. It was particularly effective how Dafoe took the female witness, who appeared rock solid, and proved that her testimony was fake for several reasons, making her into such an obvious liar/fraud that it made the whole case look like a lynching.
This is exactly what happened in real life the same year when Johnnie Cochran outed detective Mark Fuhrman as a racist, spiking the whole OJ case with poison, when Fuhrman actually had almost nothing to do with the case; If they had suppressed the bloody glove, it would have severed Fuhrman from the case entirely, and the massive, overwhelming preponderance of other evidence against him would have been enough for a conviction under normal circumstances (i.e., when they have real attorneys prosecuting the case, not some guy who is dying of a bad heart, a dingbat who can't even pay attention, and a guy who styled himself as some kind of sex symbol and went off on a promotional tour after losing the trial for the people of the state of California).
The opening scenes were a little weak, but otherwise it would have been a great film without Madonna.
The people who criticize this as being just a copy of Basic Instinct are totally correct. It was exactly the same story that uses the same mechanics throughout.
Basic Instinct was a better movie only for the single reason I outlined above; Sharon Stone was a good actress with the beauty and wits to really corrupt someone.
Otherwise, Body of Evidence would have been a much better movie. Willem Dafoe is twice the actor Michael Douglas will ever be, and there was no one in Basic Instinct that has the acting skills of Joe Mantegna.
I really miss the days when I could enjoy the acting of Joe Mantegna. Oh sure, he still acts, and does his best in Criminal Minds, but his drama is unintentionally comical when all I hear is the voice of Fat Tony from The Simpsons...
The problem is the casting of Madonna in the lead role. It isn't just that she isn't a good actor, it transcends that; it sounds like a wooden reading from a person who isn't trying to act and doesn't understand what they are reading or where the emphasis goes (see Keanu Reeves). It isn't just that Madonna can't act, either. If she were the greatest actress of all time, this movie still would not work. Madonna wasn't NEARLY young enough or beautiful enough to be the femme fatale here. Be serious, any toothpaste commercial has three women who are prettier than she is. Worse, the (presumably homely) wife who loses her husband to this serial homewrecker/murderer is played by Julianne Moore, who, at the time this was made, was approximately 800,000 times better looking than Madonna!
The obvious comeback to this from Madonna fans is that Madonna didn't have to be flawlessly physically the most beautiful woman in the world, that she was really hot at the time because of some trashy coffee table book that nobody bought
7.. just came out at the wrong time
share5/10
I can't build your candy house! It will fall apart, the sun will melt the candy it won't work!
3/10
"I'm just a happy camper! Rockin' and a-rollin'!" - Patrick Bateman, American Psycho
Maybe a 4/10. I missed the beginning and started watching and didn't stop, so i t wasn't so awful that I wanted to switch channels. It was kind of engrossing in its own way, even though the style was pretentious and over-the-top, but I kind of kept watching to see what, if anything, was going to come next. In reality, it was a sleepy, way too slow-paced thriller that didn't touch on any new ground. I never felt Willem Dafoe was getting himself into true danger, even if he was, or at least I never really cared, because there was no real plot - the plot points were just strung together. The story wrote itself and there was no suspense for me as to whether Madonna was or would be found guilty, because the movie lacked the style, pacing, dialogue, and all-around talent and appeal of Basic Instinct, itself not a great movie but enjoyable and intriguing. This one was completely by the book; no surprises. You couldn't be surprised by the ending because the story up until then was so murky and empty that anything could happen. Also, the court scenes were unnecessarily dragged out and boring in real time. Anne Archer was totally over the top in one of her scenes. It was nice to see Julianne Moore young.
I honestly didn't think Madonna was that bad. She may be a better actor than Megan Fox, not that that's saying much, of course, but I just don't think she necessarily deserves the most Razzies or whatever. Bad taste, in terms of picking scripts and choosing to essentially do softcore porn in major motion pictures? Yes. But absolutely horrible actress? No, I really don't think so. She definitely had a unique, if not truly beautiful, look a la Marlene Dietrich. Sex appeal? Check. Minimal expressive ability in the face? I'll give that a check. She just annoys easily with her baby-doll voice (best suited for a Jean Harlow-era film or moll-like side character as in Dick Tracy, not a leading lady/femme fatale). She gives an amateurish performance where some of the line readings are just boring. In real life and in her music videos Madonna is full of charisma, but thanks to this boring script with bad, sometimes wooden lines of dialogue and slow, occasionally laughable sex scenes, she just lectured her way through the part and instead of intriguing us with her icy demeanor, she was just plain boring. She and the whole movie took themselves way too seriously, and no, it wasn't bad enough or obvious enough to be funny. But all in all I can't give it lower than a 4/10 because, despite the many obvious problems, it wasn't downright offensive or painful to watch. Even when boring, it was still quite watchable on a base level.
I've certainly seen worse. 4 out of 10.
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