‘Guilty as Sin’

If recreational sex these days is a battlefield, then Rebecca De Mornay and Don Johnson, the stars of this 1993 movie, come off as couple of erotic samurai. Playing a hotshot female defense attorney and her randy client, an accused wife-killer, these two use sexiness as a weapon: ripping each other with a glance, thrusting with an innuendo, parrying with a smile. Directed by Sidney Lumet in his coolest, smoothest style, this is an erotic thriller of some bloody accomplishment and some flaws, but it’s also funny. And the humor turns precisely on the easy grace and playfulness with which these actors, public sex objects of long standing, manipulate their on-screen allure (Showtime Friday at 8 p.m.).