THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1999) (MGM) Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary, Frankie Faison, Faye Dunaway. Screenplay: Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer. Producers: Pierce Brosnan and Beau St. Clair. Director: John McTiernan. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, nudity) Running Time: 111 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There are plenty of strange, ironic and otherwise inexplicable things about Hollywood filmmaking in the 1990s, but among the more puzzling is the way it treats "star power." In the glory days of the studio system, Hollywood packaged stars together in whatever material was available at the time, always conscious of the fact that audiences would come out to see certain actors do little more than model wardrobe. The game has changed today, but only in the marketing. Plenty of films exist primarily to be glossy star packages, but the studios treat that fact as a dirty little secret. In these post-modern, indie-hip cinematic times of ours, it has become unfashionable to admit that sometimes we just like to see attractive people doing attractive things.
That's the only explanation for THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, a star package so overwhelmingly glossy you may need to shield your eyes from the glare. Pierce Brosnan (who, not coincidentally, also produced the film) stars as the title character, an impossibly wealthy New York mergers and acquisitions magnate with few worlds left to conquer. Always on the lookout for a new thrill, Crown decides to dabble in art theft, arranging an elaborate decoy so he can snatch a seminal Impressionist masterpiece from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hot on his trail comes Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), a sort of mercenary insurance investigator determined to find the thief. When she decides Crown is her man, she begins a cat-and-mouse game in which the only question is who will seduce whom first.
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR follows in the fine tradition of the original 1968 version, which itself existed largely as a star vehicle for Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. The scenery, from the nightspots of the Manhattan jet set to the tropical islands to which that set jets, is lovingly photographed. Director John McTiernan steps back from DIE HARD-style pacing to establish a moderate, almost jazzy tempo for the too-cool characters and situations. The stars, meanwhile, spend nearly two hours looking fabulous. Brosnan, who probably emerged from the womb in a freshly pressed tuxedo, squints in a manly fashion; Russo, attempting to do for women's underwear what Clark Gable did for T-shirts, does the little black dress thing with slinky appeal. They banter, they undress each other with their eyes, they undress each other with their hands. Teflon should only be this slick.
Plenty of viewers will undoubtedly find themselves carried away by this fantasia for beautiful people. I might even have been among them if THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR hadn't grown so angst-y and redundant. Throughout the film, we see snippets of Crown visiting a therapist (Dunaway, in the obligatory cameo-from-the-original), working out his commitment and trust issues. It's an early signal that the film is going to play the "sure, they're beautiful people, but they've got feelings too" card. It's entertaining enough to watch as Crown and Banning circle each other, each one thinking he or she is the manipulator rather than the manipulatee. Things get considerably more awkward as Banning waffles in her feelings for Crown with every alternate scene. Russo plays the final half hour with such overwrought gravity that you'd think her decision whether or not to turn Crown in made her Hamlet to his Polonius.
I find myself in an awkward position as I criticize THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, because ultimately I fault it for trying to work in some subtext. Plenty of films could use a healthy injection of subtext, mind you -- or the vaugest hint of a text, even -- but this film isn't one of them. It fairly screams out to be treated as a caper, with Crown and Banning spending their time trying to out-think each other rather than out-emote each other. THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR appears to be old-school melodrama, the tale of a woman who can't help falling for a guy she knows is bad for her, and somehow hopes to convert through the intensity of her love. There's just too much earnestness to the way they play it. By trying to play a 1940s story with 1990s emotional realism, the filmmakers miss the fantasy we're looking for when we watch two movie stars together in a movie that, ultimately, is about two movie stars together.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 airs to the Crown: 5.
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