Almost 30 years after he made his debut as James Bond, Pierce Brosnan is not recognized as one of the best actors to ever play the character. After Goldeneye got him off to a promising start, the movies failed to live up to Brosnan’s performances, and continued to get sillier and sillier.
Just because Brosnan didn’t have the right vehicles, though, doesn’t mean that Brosnan himself was miscast. In fact, 25 years later, The Thomas Crown Affair is all the evidence you need to know that Brosnan is a deeply charming, compelling actor. What this movie seems to prove, though, is that it really matters how good the movie around him is. The film, which tells the story of a billionaire who moonlights as an art thief, is still a great watch all these years later. These are five reasons you should make time to check it out.
It features some excellent flirtation
Brosnan and co-star Rene Russo are an absolutely perfect match, and it’s their relationship that provides the backbone to this story. The movie’s central tension is discovering whether Russo’s insurance agent, who has already basically figured out who Crown is, will turn him in, and whether Crown will give up his thieving ways because of his new love affair.
The resolution there is immensely satisfying, but what’s just as satisfying is watching Brosnan and Russo work off of each other. The Thomas Crown Affair is not a Bond movie, but it plays into all of the reasons Brosnan was a good choice for the role. Namely, he’s both immensely charming and a little bit mysterious. It’s that edge that makes the flirtatiousness a little bit tense.
It doesn’t take itself too seriously
Perhaps the best thing about The Thomas Crown Affair is that it never mistakes itself for a dark or serious movie. Instead, this is a story about a rich guy who gets his kicks by stealing expensive art that he doesn’t need. The movie’s almost complete lack of stakes is underscored in the plot itself, as it eventually becomes clear that Crown never intended to keep the paintings for himself.
The plot isn’t the only place where the lack of stakes is evident. The entire movie seems to be infused with the understanding that, although this theft may be high profile, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an important crime or one particularly worth solving. The Thomas Crown Affair prioritizes fun above all else, and that’s how it should be.
It features a thrilling final sequence
While The Thomas Crown Affair is not an action movie, per se, it does have a little of the DNA of those movies, and that’s especially true in the thrilling final sequence. If you evaluate that sequence as someone who lives in the real world, you’ll recognize immediately that it doesn’t make any sense. Even so, the sequence is great nonetheless, in part because of its setting inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
John McTiernan and Brosnan make for an ideal pair, though, taking a remarkably interesting idea and showing us beat by beat how Crown might go about stealing from one of the most secure museums in the world. It feels entirely implausible, but that doesn’t undercut in the slightest how fun it is to watch.
It’s precisely directed
Director John McTiernan had a pretty strange career, but The Thomas Crown Affair was proof that he still knew how to make movies like Die Hard and Predator more than a decade after directing them. That’s not to say that this movie is as action-oriented or gritty as those films, but it does feature the same kind of precision.
You get the feeling watching The Thomas Crown Affair that McTiernan has an intuitive sense of how to stage every sequence. That’s true whether Brosnan and Russo are simply having dinner together or we’re seeing Brosnan steal a painting. Everything feels like it has been set up like clockwork, and that’s all to the delight of the viewer at home.
It features a slew of great supporting performers
Russo and Brosnan are both great in the central roles, but the supporting cast here is filled with names too. Denis Leary plays a world-weary detective who finds himself investigating an art theft he has very little interest in, and Faye Dunaway is just as good as Crown’s therapist, a woman who seems to delight in all the ways that his brain is messed up.
Those two have the most to do, but everyone from Ben Gazzara to Mark Margolis are excellent in smaller roles, and the picture you’re left with is of a world that makes coherent sense, even if that world does not perfectly resemble our own. Casting really matters, especially when it comes to supporting roles, and few movies are better cast from number one on the call sheet down than The Thomas Crown Affair.
The Thomas Crown Affair is streaming on Tubi.
