Release Year: 1999 Rating: R Duration: 113 minutes Director: John McTiernan Producer: Beau St. Clair, Pierce Brosnan Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
synopsis
Thomas Crown is a self-made billionaire who can buy anything he wants and is irresistible to women. But there are some things that money can't buy. Thomas Crown has run out of challenges. When an alarm sounds at a world class museum and someone walks out with a priceless Monet, Crown is the last person the New York police suspect. But one person suspects him: Catherine Banning, the brilliant female investigator hired to retrieve the painting no matter what it takes. Catherine loves the chase as much as he does and she's on to his game. Crown has found his challenge. Two can play, but only one can win.
[Catherine is clearly upset]
Detective Michael McCann: Are you okay?
Catherine Banning: Yeah.
Detective Michael McCann: My girlfriend went out one night and came back married. I told everyone that I didn't care and I beat a suspect unconscious, fucked five women in three days, and drove my car the wrong way on an off-ramp. But I was okay.
There are plenty of strange, ironic and otherwise inexplicable things about Hollywood filmmaking in the 1990s, but among the more puzzling is the way it treats "star power." In the glory days of the studio system, Hollywood packaged stars together in whatever material was available at the time, always conscious of the fact that audiences would come out to see certain actors do little more than model wardrobe. The game has changed today, but only in the marketing. Plenty of films exist primarily to be glossy star packages, but the studios treat that fact as a dirty little secret. In these post-modern, indie-hip cinematic times of ours, it has become unfashionable to admit that sometimes we just like to see attractive people doing attractive things.
