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What’s -- pardon the expression -- wrong with this picture? A little indie film with a budget of less than a year’s tuition at a Jamaican medical school sets the movie business abuzz, while the studios keep cranking out expensive remakes? First it was the unhaunting The Haunting, and now we get this retread of Norman Jewison’s 1968 crime fantasy starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, The Thomas Crown Affair. Pierce Brosnan takes over for McQueen’s title character, a Wall Street pirate who doesn’t get enough jollies swimming with the sharks, betting $100,000 on golf shots, sinking sailboats, etc., so he engineers and executes the clever, complicated theft of a priceless Monet original. Rene Russo assumes the role of Dunaway (who shows up in cameo as Crown’s analyst so he can say pithy rich-bastard things such as, “A woman could trust me as long as her interest didn’t run contrary to my own...”), playing a superwoman insurance investigator, wealthy and talented in her own right, who suddenly gets all misty-moisty when faced with all that billionaire chest hair. Seems they came from similar humble beginnings, and have some sort of bond -- which they proceed to consummate on the floor, the desk, the stairs, and anyplace else that would indicate Crown may be wealthy but apparently can’t afford a bed.
Don’t get me wrong, Russo and Brosnan are very attractive, reasonably talented people -- if nothing else, her see-through dress will give Billy or Whoopie or whoever hosts the Oscars next year plenty to joke about -- but their sudden explosive chemistry simply isn’t believable, given little basis or buildup. And the plot -- even though this is a remake, details have been changed a lot from the original (which involved a bank robbery rather than an art heist), but the supposed twist at the ending was about as unexpected as last week’s total eclipse.
The Thomas Crown Affair is marginally enjoyable in places, thanks mostly to its only believable character, a NYC detective played by Denis Leary; the brief giddiness that comes with watching people throw so much American money around; and a story that realizes you don’t have to be pastry or a Czech high school exchange student to make sweet love, because forty-year-olds have sex, too (well, at least the pretty ones). And there is one clever sequence that makes fun visual play of the surrealist bowlered painings by Rene´ Magritte. Otherwise, I’d almost be more entertained watching the stock ticker run on CNBC -- or I would be if that Liz Claman lady wore a transparent suit. Now, there’s a concept: “Today on ‘Power Lunch,’ we’re going to turn up air conditioning and talk grain futures...” C-
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