- Obviously, Pierce Brosnan is the perfect actor to portray international playboy art thief Thomas Crown. I don't know why Hollywood hadn't realized it earlier, but the same qualities that make for a good James Bond also lend themselves to the depiction of suave master criminals. In John McTiernan's The Thomas Crown Affair, the eponymous Mr. Crown rips off a 100-million dollar Monet while distracting the guards with a hapless Eastern European crew that could have come from one of the lesser Die Hard films. Given that law enforcement is headed up by chucklehead Detectives McCann (Denis Leary) and Paretti (Frankie Faison), it isn't obvious that Crown will ever be in any danger of being caught. That is, until insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) arrives on the scene.
- As Banning, Russo is every bit as tough and clever as Crown, and considerably more hard-working. She immediately picks up Crown's scent and proceeds to challenge the nominally respectable businessman at every opportunity all while investigating him behind the scenes. Complicating matters, however, is the fact that Banning and Crown are also falling in love with one another. Before seeing the film, I would have assumed that its most implausible scene would be the one in which Crown triggers a museum sprinkler system to remove a thin watercolor layer above the now-returned stolen Monet. But no, that scene is infinitely more believable than one that involves lovemaking across a tile floor and up a set of stairs. Master thief or no, that just wouldn't be comfortable.
- While The Thomas Crown Affair is generally enjoyable, it also provides an unintentional contrast with McTiernan's late 80's/early 90's stint as the greatest action director in Hollywood. In fact, he even made two heist films better than this one. With all of its quotable one-liners, wonderfully gratuitous violence, and intentionally obfuscated plot, lots of people forget that Die Hard is fundamentally a heist film. As for the other, I think stealing an entire submarine in The Hunt for Red October certainly qualifies as a heist of considerable magnitude. The wit that streamed from those two masterpieces (and Predator, his other action masterwork), is limited here to a few clever quips and some fun misdirection shots that hint at Crown's modus operandi. You could certainly find heist films far worse than this one, but can you imagine how good this could have been if McTiernan had made it ten years earlier?
- Faye Dunaway has a role as Crown's therapist, in an awkward nod to the original The Thomas Crown Affair. Ben Gazzara also has a small role.
