In this extremely stylish crime thriller, Steve McQueen plays investment banker Thomas Crowne, a guy for whom making money comes easy. He spices up his life racing cars, flying planes, bedding women, and, as the film begins, planning the perfect bank robbery. Crowne assembles a team of thieves who never meet each other until the robbery begins, and they never see his face or hear his real voice. Crowne doesn't need the money, mind you; pulling off the perfect crime is just another adrenaline rush for him.
For an adventure-seeker like Crowne, things only get better when the bank's insurance company brings in a brilliant, beautiful investigator (Faye Dunaway). Vicki Anderson is the perfect foil, just as stylish and clever as Crowne, and she is immediately onto him. Crowne gets to play a sexy cat-and-mouse game with the investigator, while Vicki winds up having to reconcile her job with the feelings she develops for Crowne.
In Steven Soderbergh's 1998 film "Out of Sight", the George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez characters, a bank robber and a cop respectively, discuss movies, including another Faye Dunaway film “Three Days of the Condor.” It's a clever Easter egg, because the cop/robber sexual tension that develops between Lopez and Clooney is very similar to what happens between Dunaway and McQueen here.
Unlike “Out of Sight,” “The Thomas Crowne Affair” doesn't have an ensemble cast of colorful supporting characters. This movie is all about Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, who, fortunately, have enough charm to carry the thing. It's a delightful, sexy story of two beautiful people circling each other in a perfect storm of crime, punishment, and sexual tension.
4 stars out of 5
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