1. Plot

2. Cast

3. Differences from the 1968 film

4. Production
    Script amendments  References to 1968 film  Filming  Paintings 

5. Soundtrack
    Track listing 

6. Release
    Premiere and theatrical release  Home media release 

7. Reception
    Box office  Critical response  Awards and accolades 

8. Style

9. Possible sequel

10. References

11. External links

• Pierce Brosnan
• Rene Russo
• Denis Leary}}

Plot

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 donates a Pissarro to fill the Monet's space in the museum and falls under Banning's suspicion. She convinces McCann to begin surveillance of Crown, deducing that the wealthy playboy is motivated not by money but the sheer thrill of the crime. Banning accepts Crown's invitation to dinner. Before the date, Crown's therapist correctly guesses that he has found "a worthy adversary" in Banning.

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 Dogs Playing Poker. Banning confronts Crown, and the two give in to their mutual attraction, spending a passionate night together.

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, and 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 in prison, to no avail, although his attitude suggests to them that he recognises 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, and offers to return the Monet, giving her 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 that the fake Monet was painted by Anna; the imprisoned forger is her father, a partner of Crown, who became her guardian. Crown arrives but quickly blends into the crowd, aided by lookalikes in bowler hats a la Magritte's The Son of Man. Evading police, Crown sets 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 plan 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, but Banning's employer and McCann consider their case closed as this painting is not covered by Banning's employer. Banning races to meet Crown, but finds only the missing painting. Devastated, she sends the painting to McCann, and boards a plane back to London. Taking her seat, she finds Crown sitting behind her, and the two are passionately reunited.

Cast

• Pierce Brosnan as Thomas Crown, a billionaire and Catherine's lover.
• Rene Russo as Catherine Banning, an insurance investigator and Thomas' lover.
• Denis Leary as Detective Michael McCann, a police detective.
• Fritz Weaver as John Reynolds
• Frankie Faison as Detective Paretti, a police detective.
• Ben Gazzara as Andrew Wallace
• Mark Margolis as Heinrich Knutzhorn
• Esther Cañadas as Anna Tyrol Knutzhorn
• Faye Dunaway as Psychiatrist
• Michael Lombard as Bobby McKinley
• Simon Jones as Accountant on phone (uncredited)^[4]
• Cynthia Darlow as Daria

Dunaway played the Catherine Banning role in the 1968 original.^[7] However, the character's name was Vicki Anderson.

Differences from the 1968 film

The film makes several major changes from the original, most notably the amount of nudity and intimacy displayed during the romance between the two main characters. The original was rated PG; the remake, rated R.

The original story is about a millionaire masterminding a bank heist in Boston; the remake portrays a billionaire art thief in New York City. There was no painting stolen in the first film, with Crown and his men instead stealing $2.6 million in cash from a bank. The change in the remake was based on the idea that the more tumultuous society of the time would be less inclined to sympathize with a man who committed armed robbery out of boredom.

Steve McQueen's version of Thomas Crown has no physical involvement in the actual robbery; he is a behind-the-scenes mastermind. Pierce Brosnan's version steals the painting himself.

In the original, Crown pilots the glider himself, alone; in the remake he takes Banning for a ride.

The two movies end differently. In the original, the insurance investigator betrays Crown but he escapes, saddened that she did not join him. In the remake, after the betrayal and the realization that her jealousy of Anna Knutzhorn was unfounded, she unsuccessfully attempts to join him. Her sadness is short-lived as he surprises her by being on her plane headed to Europe.

Production

At first, director John McTiernan was unavailable for the project. Pierce Brosnan and his fellow producers considered several directors before returning to their original choice.^[5] McTiernan then received the script and added his own ideas to the production.^[6]

Script amendments

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 like 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.

References to 1968 film

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 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

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 its being nearly impossible to film interior scenes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the producers' request was "respectfully declined"),^[7] the production crew made their own museum on a soundstage. Artisans were hired to create a realistic look to the set.^[8] 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,^[9] and a member of the US Soaring Hall of Fame.^[10] The glider used is a Schempp-Hirth Duo Discus, in which it is physically impossible to reach the front controls from the rear seat. Thus, the close-shot sections were shot in a modified cockpit under a blue screen in the studio.{{citation needed|date=January 2011}}

A number of McTiernan's vehicles then appear in the next sequence, as well as his farm. The tractor in the background after the glider lands belongs to McTiernan, while the dark green Shelby Mustang that Crown drives on Martinique was originally intended to be used for Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in 1993's Last Action Hero, and was retrieved from the director's garage for this film. The six-wheeled Jeep was built specifically for the film. The house used as Crown's Caribbean getaway is owned by one of the 30 original families who settled in Martinique in the 17th century. The scenes around it, like the beach, are a montage of various other parts of Martinique, including St Pierre and the Lamentin airport.

Paintings

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.^[11]
• 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

Track listing

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

Release

Premiere and theatrical release

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

Home media release

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.

Reception

Box office

Critical response

Awards and accolades

Style

Norman Jewison emphasized in the original thriller-like story. While in 1999, John McTiernan especially focused on the flashy editing, the pronounced romance and the pleasure in the many plot twists. In the film, the director makes amusing use of a few icons of Belgian surrealist René Magritte such as the man with the bowler hat with the face hidden behind a realistically painted apple. Perhaps meant as a metaphor "pour l'histoire bouleversante".

Possible sequel

A possible sequel has long been in development hell. In January 2007, it was reported that the sequel would be a loose remake of the 1964 film Topkapi.^[13] Pierce Brosnan said in January 2009 that Paul Verhoeven was attached to direct the film.^[14] In 2010, Verhoeven said that he had left the project due to script changes and a change in the regime.^[15] The initial script was written by John Rogers from a story by himself and Harley Peyton with additional material 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.^[16]

References

External links

• {{official website|1=http://www.mgm.com/#/our-titles/1999/The-Thomas-Crown-Affair-(1999)}}
• {{IMDb title|0155267|The Thomas Crown Affair}}
• {{Allrovi/movie|id=180404|title=The Thomas Crown Affair}}
• {{mojo title|id=thomascrownaffair|title=The Thomas Crown Affair}}

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