The Thomas Crown Affair Review
by "David N. Butterworth" (dnb AT dca DOT net)April 5th, 2000
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2000 David N. Butterworth
***1/2 (out of ****)
When I first heard that Rene Russo appears topless in "The Thomas Crown Affair," I lost a lot of respect for the actress I had first noticed and admired in 1993's "In the Line of Fire." Surely you take your top off first and then you get your big break in Hollywood, Rene, not the other way around? But no, "these scenes are in keeping with the storyline and don't seem cheap or in any way gratuitous" I had been told. Yeah, right. Well surprise surprise, that critic was right on the money and my respect for Rene is restored! The two sequences in question are a very steamy sex scene with Pierce Brosnan, and an almost throwaway shot of Rene lounging on the beach sans halter. Perfectly reasonable, perfectly natural you say. And that sex scene, while pretty darned hot, is one of the most delightfully playful I've seen. Self-conscious it is not. Yet in "The Thomas Crown Affair," Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo are at their glamorous, sexiest best even with their clothes well and truly on (and boy do they wear some stellar-looking duds). For example, there's a super sexy gliding sequence that'll put butterflies in your stomach: none of that joystick-between-the-legs innuendo here. Well, maybe just a bit... Pierce plays a hyper-rich tycoon type with a penchant for Monets (and perhaps a little petty larceny too) and Rene's an insurance investigator out to nail him. Pierce plays it absolutely straight, without 007's knowing wink, and that makes him one sexy devil, and Rene has this extremely cute character trait of always nibbling on something (yeah yeah, sometimes it's Pierce), and that makes her moreish. Denis Leary, in an effective piece of casting, plays the cop with the thankless task of trying to keep everything--and everyone--in perspective and he, Leary, is very good. In fact, it's all very good--this is a smart, sophisticated, and if I didn't say it already, SEXY caper film classily directed by John McTiernan ("Die Hard," "The Hunt for Red October"). Oh yes, and Faye Dunaway (who co-starred with Steve McQueen in the original film) has a small part as Pierce's shrink. The song that everybody remembers from the 1968 version, "The Windmills of Your Mind," is here given the jazz-fusion treatment during a window shopping/falling-in-love montage and also provides a smoky, end-credits closeout by Muzak's own Sting. Were it not for the fact that it's such a bubblegum flick on the surface, despite its stunning ode-to-Dada denouement, then "The Thomas Crown Affair" might rightly have been regarded as one of the best films of 1999.
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David N. Butterworth
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