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Released on: 4/6/2010
Director: John McTiernan
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary
Year: 1999
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The Movie:
John McTiernan's remake of the 1968 heist film originally directed by Norma Jewison stars Pierce Brosnan, who also produced, in the role originally made famous by the late, great Steve McQueen and a very attractive Rene Russo replacing Faye Dunaway. How are the results? Entertaining enough in their own right, but nowhere near as cool, though not for lack of trying on McTiernan's part. Like the original film, there's a whole lot of style but not as much substance as it probably needed.
The remake casts Brosnan as Thomas Crown, a rich businessman with more money than brains and a penchant for boat racing. Crown wants more out of life than the petty thrills that conventional sporting can supply, however, so he frequently tries his hand at stealing an original Monet painting from an ultra secure New York City art gallery. Crown's playboy style life gets complicated when a foxy insurance investigator named Catharine Banning (Russo) is sent in to check out the scene and help out the cops working the case (lead by Denis Leary).
When Banning begins to rightfully suspect Crown, the pair engage in a battle of wits and willpower, each trying to seduce the other and win the game and as their sexual escapades being to heat up, Crown and Banning both have to decide how they wants this to all pan out…
It's interesting how Russo and Brosnan play off of one another here, letting their respective lives be taken over by all encompassing desire and realizing that despite their inherent professional differences just how much they have in common. A shrink could have a field day analyzing the pair, as each one obviously needs the other, or seems to think they do, but is unwilling to really open up on much more than a purely physical level. The film exploits this, of course, and much of its run time is taken up by the film's highly touted sex scenes to the point where it actually beings to take away from the other aspects of the film.
This is, after all, supposed to be a heist movie, right? McTiernan loses site of that at times but when he remembers, the movie can be quite suspenseful. The performances are a bit clichéd at times - Russo is all sex appeal all the time and really doesn't seem to ever have any down time in that regard, while Brosnan is a charming and devilish playboy twenty-four/seven. These characters really only seem to have one mode and because of that they're really quite hard to take seriously. Slick camera work, fancy locations galore and flashy wardrobe tries to hide this, tough as nice as it all looks, it never completely succeeds.
On a superficial level, however, McTiernan's movie is entertaining enough. There is some good dialogue here and not shortage of double entendres and sexual metaphors and while the picture could have used more suspense in place of the padding that the sex scenes sometimes feel like, there's enough tension in spots that the picture is always entertaining enough, even if it's never more than that.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Thomas Crown Affair looks good in this AVC encoded 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p high definition transfer from MGM/Fox. Fine detail is very obviously improved not only in the close up shots but also in medium and long shots as well. Color reproduction also takes a step forward and is much improved from previous standard definition offerings. Black levels look pretty solid though there are a few scenes where they could have been a bit deeper than they are. Skin tones look very lifelike, however, and there's a lot of facial detail here to ogle. Some softness inherent in the photography rears its head and might irritate those who require everything to be razor sharp, but aside from that, this is a very respectable transfer.
Fox hasn't skimped on the audio options for this release. The primary mix is an English language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 but standard definition DTS 5.1 tracks are provided in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo tracks offered up in Hungarian, Russian, Thai and Turkish. Subtitles are provided in English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.
The DTS-MA track on the disc is a solid one. Levels are well balanced and the score is spread out very nicely. Dialogue is easy to understand while sound effects pack the right amount of punch without ever overpowering anything they shouldn't be overpowering in the first place. There are no hiss or distortion related issues to note and while the score does sound a little bit dated, you can't fault the disc for that.
The Blu-ray disc is completely barebones aside from menus and chapter selection. MGM has included the previous DVD release as a second disc in the set, however, so Joe McTiernan's audio commentary is available there, but really, it should have been included on the Blu-ray.
The Final Word:
The absence of the commentary on the Blu-ray release is irritating and the lack of extras sure to annoy the film's fan base, but The Thomas Crown Affair looks and sounds very good on its Blu-ray debut. The movie itself is hard to take too seriously, but it's not a half bad popcorn film as its got enough superficial sex and violence to keep things entertaining.