Lawrence Kasdan's first directorial effort is a throwback to the early days of film noir. The scene is a beastly hot Florida coastal town, where naive attorney Ned (William Hurt) is entranced by the alluring Matty (Kathleen Turner in her film debut). Ned is manipulated into killing Matty's much older husband (Richard Crenna), the plan being that Ned's knowledge of legal matters will enable both conspirators to escape scott-free.
This might have been the case, had not Matty been infinitely craftier than the cloddish Ned. Just when it seems as though the film has run out of plot twists, we're handed yet another surprise.
½ Finally got round to watching this as heard it was a great thriller and Kathleen Turner's first film role. It looks very old and dated more like an early 70's film. It starts far too slow for me with not much happening for the first half of a long run time. Once the pace picked up towards the end and plot unraveled I did like it a lot more. It has some neat twists in it and I can see how this influenced the likes of the Wild Things thrillers just for one example. If you like thrillers it's worth sticking with for the 2nd half of the film.