The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Director: Tom McTiernan                        Writer: Leslie Dixon & Kurt Wimmer
Film Score: Bill Conte                            Cinematography: Tom Priestley Jr.
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Dennis Leary and Frankie Faison

The remake of The Thomas Crown Affair is long on style, and short on substance. While the star potential of the cast almost surely seemed like a guaranteed hit, the emotional center of the piece relies too heavily on the relationship between Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, and for some reason it just never jells. The fault is certainly not with the two actors. Brosnan was brilliant in his turn as 007 and even better in the caper film After the Sunset. And Russo was much more compelling in Clint Eastwood’s In The Line of Fire and brilliant in Get Shorty. The script seems more than adequate, which leaves the fault, then, squarely on the direction (or lack of it) by Tom McTierman.

McTiernan is mostly associated with action/adventure, manning the helm of the first two episodes in the Die Hard franchise, a couple of Sean Connery films, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger's Predator, and that is no doubt where the real problem lies. The characters in The Thomas Crown Affair are just too overdone, too over the top to make the love story believable. The story centers on the theft of a Monet by the super rich Brosnan. While the police, headed by the always dependable Dennis Leary, are stuck, Russo’s insurance investigator comes in and essentially takes over the case, unrestrained by police procedures or civil rights. And while her brash personality works in that aspect, it strains credulity to imagine that she would let her guard down enough to fall for Brosnan in the end.

The caper itself is ingenious, and works well, and if that had been the central focus of the film, as with something like The Score, it might have been okay. But the romance is the real heart of the movie, as it was in the original 1968 version with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, and for that reason it doesn’t quite manage to work. There’s a nice cameo by Faye Dunaway in the remake, though it also seems shoehorned in and jarring rather than growing out of the plot in an organic way, as it was in something like Against All Odds, a remake of Out of The Past in which Jane Greer played the mother of the character she played in the earlier film.

In the end it’s a miss, and something that’s not really worth seeking out. There are much better films with both Russo and Brosnan that showcase their talents and emotional range to much greater effect than The Thomas Crown Affair.