AllMovie

Veteran action director John McTiernan makes sure that his update of The Thomas Crown Affair has enough snappy heist footage and spy movie thrills to appeal to those who don't ask very much of it. Those peeling away a few layers will feel that they must have slept through a key five minutes, because the various double crosses don't quite sort themselves out, and the plot ultimately falls short on logic. Whether the painting is a forgery or not, whether the obvious suspect is guilty or not, and several characters' motivations and actions all get jumbled up by the hollow finish. As Thomas Crown, Pierce Brosnan doesn't have to stretch much from his contemporaneous role as James Bond, even borrowing some of the same wardrobe and debonair one-liners. Rene Russo's is the more daring role, sultry and bad-ass. Together, they are unconvincing, with Russo not a third the professional investigator she should be -- which wouldn't be such a problem if the script generated a plausible reason for her infatuation with Brosnan's arrogant jet setter. Too often, the movie slouches away from thriller toward ill-advised romance, showing the hunter and hunted vacationing blissfully together under palm trees. The Thomas Crown Affair has its moments, but it's not a crowning achievement for anyone involved.