Romcoms during criminal enterprises have a proud cinematic history. Alfred Hitchcock took the formula and bascially made it an art form. Art being the operative word here: The Thomas Crown Affair is about rich, beautiful people engaging in rich, beautiful crimes and while attracting rich beautiful people to chase them. It’s hot. It’s elegant. It’s steamy erotic thriller material.
Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is a man who gets what he wants, when he wants it. In this case, it’s a $100 Million Claude Monet painting that he steals from a New York Museum. On the case are two police detectives (Dennis Leary and Frankie Faison) as well as Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), an insurance inspector who immediately suspects Crown. Banning then pushes Crown into a game of cat and mouse, but in this case, the cat is equally interesting in hooking up with and catching the mouse at the same time.
This movie leans into ALL of its premise, good and bad. Rich man stealing art from a museum, on the crime scale, it’s not life, world, or even dog threatening. No one’s gonna die here, just some art/money kidnapped from rich person to rich person. Yes that means low stakes, but that also opens John McTiernan to lighten things up. An action director by nature, he has a lot of fun cooling up the art heist, letting a posh man in a tuxedo pull it off like it’s his day job. McTiernan’s direction gives The Thomas Crown Affair a debonair, suave attitude and style that the rich carry themselves with. The script matches that breeziness, letting Russo and Brosnan flirt over some light felony criminal activity overtly, in beautiful dresses and tuxes. Both of them are the smartest people in the room, and they both know it. In most romcoms, the goal is the bedroom for the flirters (or in this case, a staircase). In THIS movie though, the battle of wits is the goal: finding an equal match is the juice for Russo and Brosnan. The lavish toys and settings are just window dressing.
The success of The Thomas Crown Affair relies on the audience buying into the arousing tete-a-tete between Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Brosnan is basically doing a version of James Bond here, without the double entendres. He can pull off looking charming and handsome in his sleep; Rene Russo has no Bond role equivalent, but she fits right in the minute she asks to dance with Pierce Brosnan in a beautiful evening dress. The pair sizzle in the first half of the movie, as they try to one up and dazzle their attraction with anything and everything a rich person has to offer, using the well written script to great effect. The 2nd half is a more mixed affair, as the story tries to force changes of heart for both the characters down the audience’s throat. But Russo and Brosnan have bought enough good will that it doesn’t matter too much.
Ah, the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. The Thomas Crown Affair holds nothing back in showing how meaningless this whole romantic heist is in the scheme of things, but you’re so distracted by island hopping, tiny jets, and beautiful staircase f*cking that nobody cares to notice except the deeply jealous. Yeah, I’m outing myself here. I’m cray cray jelly yo….