What does a man who has everything do for fun? He steals high-priced works of art for his own amusement. Pierce Brosnan plays Thomas Crown, a businessman that buys and sells companies with little regard for anything other than making money who also possesses a love of art that he takes to the extreme. He’s smart, witty and, of course, good-looking. (This is a movie, after all.) When a Monet is swiped from the New York Museum of Art, Catherine Banning, an insurance investigator, teams up with Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary) to figure out who stole it. McCann and Banning easily figure out that its Crown who took it, but they can’t prove it. Banning breaks protocol by using her brains and sexual magnetism to find a way to come up with something that will pin the crime on Crown. However, she doesn’t plan on falling in love with him which puts a little damper on her objectivity.
This film, which is a remake of 1967 movie of the same name, is very stylish, well-photographed and somewhat devoid of the chemistry between the two main characters that should be required to make it work. Rene Russo and Pierce Brosnan, as individuals, still manage to work enough magic to make the film watchable, even if their on-screen fling is somewhat less-than-believable. Also enticing is Denis Leary’s McCann. Leary is a fine actor when given a role like this and I want to see that happen more often.
There have been a lot of comparisons made in the media between this version and the original, which starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. I haven’t seen the original, so I can make no such comparisons. I do know that Pierce Brosnan is no Steve McQueen, so the differences between the two films probably start there. Brosnan is, however, quite good in this version. Russo makes for an extremely sexual Catherine Banning. It’s hard to take your eyes off of her as she makes her case against Thomas Crown. The script is loaded with a lot of humor, which keeps the film moving at a brisk pace and, although there’s little action, things never get boring.
The Thomas Crown Affair is a film I expected to find unbelievable, boring, and full of clichés. Quite the contrary, it is a very stylish, likable movie that offers up a set of interesting characters that are portrayed well by interesting actors. Well worth a rental.
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
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