*Get "The Thomas Crown Affair" on Amazon here*
*Get "The Thomas Crown Affair" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on Amazon here*
*Get The Thomas Crown Affair by Evan Lee Heyman on Amazon here*
*Get "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1999) on Amazon here*
They don't make 'em like this anymore, and that might be a good thing.
Millionaire Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) hires a bunch of D.B. Cooper look-alikes to knock over a bank and give the money to him. He jets to Geneva with cash in tow, and opens a secret account that he uses to pay off his gang in installments. Fine, except for Erwin (Jack Weston), one of the crooks who you know is going to screw everything up. The Boston Police are stumped, led by the lead stumped detective Malone (Paul Burke). There are no prints, no one seems to be able to give an accurate description of the gang, and the cops are at a dead end. Enter, over half an hour into this, Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway). Vicki is stylish, comes off as kind of dumb, and the perfect insurance investigator. She and Malone spend about three minutes deducing Crown is behind the robbery. Vicki is in this for the money, she gets ten percent of the more than two million dollars stolen as her salary. Vicki goes to the extraordinary means of kidnapping Erwin's child in order for him to get a large amount of money for ransom and prove he had something to do with the robbery. Vicki also makes herself available to Crown, under the watchful eye of Malone's cronies. Crown and Vicki fall in love, or is Vicki taking this investigation into even more questionable territory?
This film premiered in 1968, and was the basis for the 1999 superior-in-every-way remake starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. I, too, premiered in 1968, and felt ancient while witnessing what the fashion and interior design worlds were forcing onto my young mod parents. McQueen is cool and confident, Dunaway is cool and confident, and the film is cold and aloof. The viewer does not care one iota for these people, and I think the director senses this. Jewison pulls out every cinematic trick available- thank God as a nation we were able to reject the split-screen process and recognize it for what it was- stupid. The investment made in these two characters is so minimal, I knew every move they would make. Watching this is like watching an episode of "Columbo." The crime occurs, we know who did it, and we are supposed to be entertained by the process of detecting, except that "Columbo" was smart and entertaining. In this film, the sexual byplay and tension is supposed to be the entertainment, and it is not. The chess scene is cutesy, the long kiss does not seem that long, and is concluded with another of Jewison's tricks. "The Windmills of Your Mind" is one of the worst Best Song Academy Award winners ever. It sounds like it was written in a recording studio bathroom while the singer cleared his throat and the orchestra tuned their instruments. Composer Michel Legrand cannot decide if this film is a Hollywood romance from twenty years earlier, or a modern film defying those old conventions. His score is all over the map.
In the end, Crown's motive for all of this is that he was bored- I knew how he feels. As Dunaway chokes back a sob at the end of the film, and shows the only emotion in "The Thomas Crown Affair," I choked back my popcorn and pressed the STOP button on the remote. As of this 2025 update of this review, there is another remake in the works.
Stats:
(1968) 102 min. (4/10)
-Directed by Norman Jewison
-Written by Alan Trustman
-Cast: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston, Biff McGuire, Addison Powell, Astrid Heeren, Gordon Pinsent, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Bull, Sidney Armus, Peg Shirley, Patrick Horgan
(R)
Media Viewed: Home Video
*Academy Awards*
-Best Original Score (lost to "The Lion in Winter")
-Best Original Song- "The Windmills of Your Mind" (won)
*BAFTA*
-Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music (lost to "Z")
*Golden Globes*
-Best Original Score (lost to "The Shoes of the Fisherman")
-Best Original Song- "The Windmills of Your Mind" (won)
