The Thomas Crown Affair (1999 film)

 

 

Thieves infiltrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art inside an actual Trojan horse, preparing to steal an entire gallery of paintings, but are apprehended. In the confusion, billionaire Thomas Crown – the crime's secret mastermind – steals Monet's painting of San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. NYPD Detective Michael McCann heads the investigation into the theft of the $100 million artwork, with the unwelcome assistance of insurance investigator Catherine Banning.

Crown lends a Pissarro to fill the Monet's space in the museum and falls under Banning's suspicion. She persuades McCann to begin surveillance of Crown, deducing that he is motivated not by money but by the sheer thrill of the crime. Banning later accepts Crown's invitation to dinner.^[6]

At dinner, Banning has a copy of Crown's keys made; she and her team search his home and discover the Monet, which is revealed to be a taunting imitation painted over a copy of Poker Sympathy from the Dogs Playing Poker series. Banning confronts Crown, and the two give in to their mutual attraction and have sex.

Banning and Crown continue their cat-and-mouse game and their trysts, despite McCann's surveillance. Accompanying Crown on a trip to Martinique, Banning realizes he is preparing to run but rejects his offer to join him when the time comes. McCann presents Banning with photographs of Crown with another woman, Anna, complicating her feelings toward the case and her prime suspect. Banning and McCann discover that the fake Monet is in fact an expert forgery that could only have been painted by someone with access to the original; they visit the likeliest forger, Heinrich Knutzhorn, in prison, to no avail, although his body language suggests to them that he recognizes the work.

Later, Banning finds Crown packing his belongings with Anna. He promises Banning his interest lies with her alone, stating that Anna works for him but he would be compromising her to define the nature of their association. Crown offers to return the Monet by putting it back on the wall of the museum, and gives Banning a time and place to meet him when he's finished. Tearfully, Banning leaves and informs McCann.

The following day, the police stake out the museum, waiting to arrest Crown. Banning learns from McCann that the fake Monet was painted by Anna; the imprisoned forger Knutzhorn is her father, a former business partner of Crown, who became her guardian. Crown arrives and advertises his position in the lobby. The police realize that Crown expected Banning to turn him in and that he has set up another plot. Before the police can apprehend him, Crown blends into the crowd, aided by lookalikes in bowler hats à la Magritte's The Son of Man. Evading the officers, Crown releases smoke bombs and pulls a fire alarm, setting off the museum's fire sprinklers. His donated Pissarro, hanging in the Monet's place, is washed clean by the sprinklers to reveal the real Monet.

Crown's game is made clear: upon stealing the Monet, Crown had Anna forge the Pissarro over it and "returned" it to the museum. However, Crown has now vanished with another painting—one that Banning had told him she would have selected over the Monet. With the Monet recovered, Banning considers her role in the case concluded; the second missing painting is not covered by her employer. McCann briefly stops Banning to press her for anything she might know, but admits he has since stopped caring whether or not they catch Crown and bids her farewell. Banning then races to meet Crown at the rendezvous, but finds only a bowler-hatted courier who delivers to her the newly-stolen painting. Devastated, Banning has the painting sent to McCann and boards a flight back to London. In her seat after takeoff, she begins to cry when a hand from the row behind extends to her a handkerchief and offers her comfort. Recognizing the passenger's thinly-disguised voice, she turns to find Crown sitting behind her, and the two are reunited.

Dunaway played the Catherine Banning role in the 1968 original.^[8] However, the character's name was Vicki Anderson.

At first, director John McTiernan was unavailable for the project. Pierce Brosnan and his fellow producers considered several directors (including Mike Newell, Andrew Davis, Roger Donaldson) before returning to their original choice.^[9] McTiernan then received the script and added his own ideas to the production.^[10]

After McTiernan signed on to the project, he changed the theme of the central heist and a number of key scenes. McTiernan felt that contemporary audiences would be less forgiving of Thomas Crown if he staged two armed bank robberies for fun as McQueen did in the original, rather than if he staged an unarmed art heist. He wrote the heist based on the Trojan horse theme and on a technical failure of thermal cameras. McTiernan also deemed a polo match that was used in the original and had been rewritten into the new script to be clichéd, and he wanted a scene that conveyed more action and excitement, not just wealth. He substituted a catamaran race, in which Brosnan performed his own stunts^{[citation needed]}. Originally, an elaborate 30-page sequence of the theft of the final painting was planned, although McTiernan removed this in favor of a simple mystified response by Denis Leary's character when asked how it was taken.

There are a number of echo references to the original 1968 version of the film. The most obvious is the casting of Faye Dunaway as Crown's psychiatrist; Dunaway portrayed insurance investigator Vicki Anderson in the original. In the remake, "The Windmills of Your Mind" plays during the ballroom scene, as background music in a couple of other scenes, and during the credits at the end; the song earned an Oscar for the original film. Both films share a nearly identical scene with Crown playing high-stakes golf, and in both films Crown pilots a glider for recreation.

Filming took place in several parts of New York City, including Central Park. The corporate headquarters of Lucent Technologies stood in for Crown's suite of offices. Due to the impossibility of filming scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the producers' request was "respectfully declined"),^[8] the production crew made their own museum on a soundstage. Artisans were hired to create a realistic look to the set.^[11] Another scene was filmed in a different city landmark: the main research library of the New York Public Library.

The glider scenes were shot at Ridge Soaring Gliderport and Eagle Field in Pennsylvania and at Corning-Painted Post Airport in New York. The two glider aero-tow shots were taken from film shot at different airports with different tow planes. The initial takeoff was photographed at the Harris Hill Soaring Center located at the National Soaring Museum in Elmira, NY. The glider pilot was Thomas L. Knauff, a world record holder,^[12] and a member of the US Soaring Hall of Fame.^[13]

The paintings, copies of which were supplied by "Troubetzkoy Paintings" in New York, appearing in the film are:

• San Giorgio Maggiore at Twilight by Claude Monet, owned by the National Museum and Art Gallery in Cardiff, Wales.
• Wheatstacks by Claude Monet, owned by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
• Noon: Rest From Work (After Millet) by Vincent van Gogh – The painting Crown admires and calls "his haystacks," the original is owned by Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.
• The Artist's Garden at Eragny by Camille Pissarro.
• The Son of Man by René Magritte – The painting that is seen several times in the film depicting a man in a suit with a Bowler hat and an apple covering his face.
• Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil by Édouard Manet – The second painting to go missing, given to, and later returned by, Catherine. It is currently housed at the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London.^[14]
• The Intervention of the Sabine Women by Jacques-Louis David, owned by the Louvre in Paris.
• A painting in the style of Cassius Coolidge's series, Dogs Playing Poker is shown but it is not one of Coolidge's works.

Soundtrack

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[15]

The soundtrack was composed by Bill Conti and arranged by Jack Eskew. It features a variety of jazz arrangements which harken back to the original film's version. In addition, the film ends with a reprise of the Academy Award-winning song "Windmills of Your Mind" sung by Sting. Throughout the film, Nina Simone's recording of "Sinnerman" (from the album Pastel Blues, 1965) is used in segments. Mostly the non-vocal parts are used (hand-clapping and piano riffs), but in the final scenes, where Crown returns to the scene of the crime, Simone sings "Oh sinnerman, where are you gonna run to?"

1. "Windmills of Your Mind" – Sting
2. "Sinnerman" – Nina Simone
3. "Everything (...Is Never Quite Enough)" – Wasis Diop
4. "Caban La Ka Kratchie" – Georges Fordant
5. "Black & White X 5" – Bill Conti
6. "Never Change" – Bill Conti
7. "Meet Ms. Banning" – Bill Conti
8. "Goodnight/Breaking & Entering" – Bill Conti
9. "Glider Pt. 1" – Bill Conti
10. "Glider Pt. 2" – Bill Conti
11. "Cocktails" – Bill Conti
12. "Quick Exit" – Bill Conti

The Thomas Crown Affair premiered on July 27, 1999, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 6, 1999, by United Artists and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

The Thomas Crown Affair was released on DVD in the LaserDisc format on January 4, 2000, in the United States by MGM Home Entertainment. The DVD includes comments from director John McTiernan. When the film was broadcast on TBS, the Pepsi One logo on the can, from which Banning drinks, had to be deleted.

The Thomas Crown Affair grossed $69,305,181 at the United States box office and a further $55,000,000 in other territories, totaling $124,305,181 worldwide against a budget of $48 million.^[1]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 69% based on 102 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's consensus states: "Sleek, stylish, and painlessly diverting, The Thomas Crown Affair is a remake of uncommon charm."^[4] On Metacritic the film has a score of 72% based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[5]

In January 2007, it was announced that a sequel would be a loose remake of the 1964 film Topkapi.^[16] Pierce Brosnan said in January 2009 that Paul Verhoeven was attached to direct the film.^[17] In 2010, Verhoeven said that he had left the project due to script changes and a change in the regime.^[18] At one point, both Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron were rumored for a part in the film, with Brosnan more keen on bringing Theron on board.^[19] In April 2013, Brosnan acknoweldged the film's status of being in development hell, but claimed he would still like to do it.^[20] The initial script was penned by John Rogers from a story he had co-written with Harley Peyton while additional material was provided by Nick Meyer, Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek.

In the April 2014 edition of Empire, John McTiernan revealed that he had written a script for the sequel, while in prison, called Thomas Crown and the Missing Lioness.^[21]

In 2016, Michael B. Jordan had approached Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to pitch a new adaptation of the story, with hopes of starring in the lead role.^[22][23] By April 2023 after previously acquiring MGM, Amazon announced plans to reboot the franchise, with a new feature film in development through the company's Amazon Studios.^[24]

• Heist film

• Official website
• The Thomas Crown Affair at IMDb
• The Thomas Crown Affair at the TCM Movie Database
• The Thomas Crown Affair at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• The Thomas Crown Affair at Box Office Mojo