Pauline Kael

"…. Kasdan has found an actress (Kathleen Turner) sho is tall and has a lovely voice. But he poses her with such diligence that is she has any sensuality in her it’s completely blocked. In general, the most embarrassing thing a performer can do is to act more sexy than he or she appears to be, and Kasdan has led Turner into this trap, but she’s so remote that she isn’t even embarrassing. She lures a lawyer (William Hurt) who’s a chump to murder her rich husband (Richard Crenna), as if she were following the marks on the floor made by the actresses who preceded her. If we felt that this siren enjoyed her perversity and control—as Barbara Stanwyck did in Double Indemnity—there’d be some humor, at least, in her ensnarement of the lawyer. Or if she had Stanwyck’s smeary mouth and cheap, teasing way of rubbing against her fall guy, there’d be the suggestion of zingy, nasty sex. But what she’s hiding never peeps through. She’s groomed and cultivated, like Lauren Bacall in a fool’s reverie….”

Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, November 9, 1981