Amazon.com video review:
Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is also a
high-stakes thief; his latest caper is an elaborate heist at a Boston
bank. Why does he do it? For the same reason he flies gliders, bets on
golf strokes, and races dune buggies: he needs the thrill to feel
alive. Insurance investigator Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway) gets her
own thrills by busting crooks, and she's got Crown in her cross
hairs. Naturally, these two will get it on, because they have a lot in
common: they're not people, they're walking clothes racks. (McQueen
looks like he'd rather be in jeans than Crown's natty three-piece
suits.) The Thomas Crown Affair is a catalog of '60s
conventions, from its clipped editing style to its photographic
trickery (the inventive Haskell Wexler behind the camera) to its mod
design. You can almost sense director Norman Jewison deciding to "tell
his story visually," like those newfangled European films; this would
explain the long passages of Michel Legrand's lounge
jazz ladled over endless montages of the pretty Dunaway and
McQueen at play. (The opening-credits song, "Windmills of Your Mind,"
won an Oscar.) It's like a "What Kind of Man Reads Playboy?" ad come
to life, and much more interesting as a cultural snapshot than a piece
of storytelling. --Robert Horton
Amazon.com Essentials:
Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is also a
high-stakes thief; his latest caper is an elaborate heist at a Boston
bank. Why does he do it? For the same reason he flies gliders, bets on
golf strokes, and races dune buggies: he needs the thrill to feel
alive. Insurance investigator Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway) gets her
own thrills by busting crooks, and she's got Crown in her cross
hairs. Naturally, these two will get it on, because they have a lot in
common: they're not people, they're walking clothes racks. (McQueen
looks like he'd rather be in jeans than Crown's natty three-piece
suits.) The Thomas Crown Affair is a catalog of '60s
conventions, from its clipped editing style to its photographic
trickery (the inventive Haskell Wexler behind the camera) to its mod
design. You can almost sense director Norman Jewison deciding to "tell
his story visually," like those newfangled European films; this would
explain the long passages of Michel Legrand's lounge
jazz ladled over endless montages of the pretty Dunaway and
McQueen at play. (The opening-credits song, "Windmills of Your Mind,"
won an Oscar.) It's like a "What Kind of Man Reads Playboy?" ad come
to life, and much more interesting as a cultural snapshot than a piece
of storytelling. --Robert Horton
