The Thomas Crown Affair

Directed by Norman Jewison, The Thomas Crown Affair follows Steve McQueen’s Thomas Crown as he pulls off a seemingly perfect heist but eventually finds himself pursued (and seduced) by a cunning insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway’s Vicki Anderson). Filmmaker Jewison, working from Alan R. Trustman’s script, delivers a slow-moving and mostly inaccessible drama that leans exceedingly (and egregiously) hard into its ’60s aesthetic, which paves the way for an arms-length narrative that contains few elements designed to wholeheartedly capture and sustain the viewer’s interest – with the less-than-captivating vibe compounded by a meandering, repetitive second act predominantly focused on the romantic exploits of McQueen and Dunaway’s respective characters. (The hopeless absence of chemistry between the two only perpetuates the underwhelming feel.) And although the picture admittedly does boast a very small handful of compelling sequences, including an initial heist sequence that fares reasonably well, The Thomas Crown Affair is, by and large, an aggressively (and palpably) dated endeavor that’s rather tedious and uninvolving for the bulk of its overlong, padded-out running time.

** out of ****

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