Madonna's acting is not as bad as the script is. In fact, I don't think that Madonna is a bad actress at all. When presented with a good material, she delivers. But she tends to pick the characters that match her public persona. In this film, Madonna's body is a thing of beauty to look at and admire. She channels the actresses of the classic Hollywood era, which I adore, and has the best boobs in the history of Hollywood.

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.

In this raunchy thriller, Madonna is suspected of murdering her elderly partner using her sexy body (lucky guy). After she is accused of such a "crime" the lawyer she chooses to represent her is Willem defoe.OK, so it is not the most plausible plot line but this movie can still be enjoyed, not least for Madonnas hot body in numerous steamy scenes which although often criticised I found to be very well done and quite erotic. It is true that Madonna and her body are the main reason to watch this thriller but there are some decent genuine performances by defoe and mantegna battling it out in the court room and Anne Archer as the deceased' embittered ex. Julianne Moore is also in there in a small role as Franks (defoes) wife.Bottom line! if you like 80/90s sex films then this is a definitely worth watching. Also make sure to get the unrated version as there is a lot more to see in there.