The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com Member: Online Film Critics Society
**1/2 out of four
"Can a woman trust you?" "As long as her interests don't run too contrary to my own."
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary. Rated R.
The Thomas Crown Affair is a film so well-made technically that it lures you into thinking that it's actually good cinematically. It's not. But the movie moves so smoothly that we almost don't notice the fact that it expects us to believe things that are impossible -- not just implausible -- impossible. Ridiculous performances and the masqueraded shallowness of the center relationship might also fly by the less discriminating viewer. It's like a lemon automobile with a shiny coat of paint.
Besides making the classic actioner Die Hard, director John McTiernan is also responsible for Last Action Hero, one of the biggest flops in history. This is his second movie since that humiliating occasion and even if it isn't very good, he certainly redeems himself as a director (working on an assumption that he ever needed redemption, which quite arguable).
In a James Bond-ish performance (surprised?), Pierce Brosnan plays Thomas Crown, a limitlessly wealthy "finance geek", as one of the characters naively puts it, to whom there is more than meets the eye. He's thrill-seeker extraordinaire and a world-class thief; a man to whom the process of stealing a difficult-to-snatch object is worth infinitely more than actually possessing it. When he illicitly gets ahold of a Monet original worth $100 million he gets more than he bargained for: Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), a clever insurance agent responsible for retrieving the painting if she can.
Crown loves a good challenge so he indirectly admits to her that it was he who took the beloved Monet and gets her to date him (why? how?). They sleep together (hello?) and fall in love (why? how? when?) and that puts dear Catherine into a dilemma: does she run away with Crown or does she turn him in?
Aside from the numerous logical contradictions, especially associated with the admittedly clever climax, the first major flaw that struck me was the supported notion that Thomas Crown can correctly guess what everyone around him is going to do. McTiernan's intention seems to be to define him as an enigma: but this is a full-fledged romance and such definition is wholly inappropriate. As such, Crown rarely feels human to us and thus doesn't seem capable of falling in love. If the filmmakers wanted the romance to work they should have made Thomas Crown a real person.
Rene Russo's laughable performance doesn't help the situation any. Constantly leering, comically self-confident, her character suffers from a similar ailment as Brosnan's except in her case it's the performer's fault. She's more of a femme fatale than a human being; a superhero rather than a woman (Inspector Gadget could have used her presence). Rene Russo is another factor that keeps the romance from ever going anywhere. It has a fancy coating but it remains shallow and impersonal; we see two people falling in love but get no insight into their relationship.
Despite all of the above, The Thomas Crown Affair remains a moderately entertaining, engaging movie. It's very well-directed and wonderfully filmed. It also benefits from what is probably the year's best score: intricate and beautiful, it not only adds excitement to scenes that very much need it but it also pulls off the feat of flawlessly and unintrusively supplementing the action even in scenes where suspense, which a film's score is predominantly and sometimes exclusively used to emphasize, takes the back seat to another prevalent emotion.
I can't recommend The Thomas Crown Affair, but I can't say I strongly disliked it either. It's a film by someone who knows how to make films and does it well. Unfortunately it's deeply flawed (although the flaws don't come to you until after the movie) and I can't, with a clear conscience suggest that you see it over some of the far better movies this summer. But if your debating whether to see, say, Inspector Gadget or The Thomas Crown Affair, leap for those Thomas tickets or be sorry. ©1999 Eugene Novikov‰
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