It’s rare to see movies made like this one anymore, and perhaps that's a positive thing. McQueen portrays Thomas Crown, a wealthy individual who assembles a group resembling D.B. Cooper look-alikes to rob a bank and hand over the proceeds. He then travels to Geneva, taking the money with him, where he establishes a secret account to pay his accomplices in installments. That's acceptable enough. Jack Weston embodies Erwin, one of the criminals destined to sabotage everything. The Boston police are baffled, with Detective Eddie Malone (Paul Burke) leading the investigation. There’s no physical evidence, nobody can provide an accurate description of the gang, and law enforcement finds themselves at a standstill. Approximately thirty-six minutes in, Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) appears. She's stylish, seems somewhat naive, and proves to be the ideal insurance investigator. Malone and Vicki spend roughly three minutes figuring out that Crown is responsible for the robbery. Her motivation is financial gain; she receives ten percent of the more than two million dollars stolen as her fee. To extract money from Erwin and demonstrate his involvement, Vicki resorts to kidnapping his child. She also positions herself within Crown's orbit, under the surveillance of Malone’s associates. A romance develops between Crown and Vicki – or is Vicki blurring ethical lines in her investigation? She reveals she knows his secrets, both verbally and physically. The majority of the film unfolds as a contest of wits, with each character attempting to outmaneuver the other. Ultimately, Crown devises an ultimate test for the seemingly unflappable Vicki, proposing another bank robbery to see if she will betray him or not. This movie debuted in 1968 and served as the foundation for the 1999 remake, which was superior in every aspect, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. I myself was born in 1968, and felt old watching the fashion and interior design trends being imposed on my young, modern parents. McQueen is effortlessly cool, Dunaway exudes confidence, and the film itself maintains a detached coolness. The audience doesn’t form any real connection with these characters, and I believe the director recognizes this. Jewison employs every cinematic technique imaginable – thankfully, as a country we rejected the split-screen process and saw it for what it was: foolish. The investment in these two characters is so minimal that I anticipated their every action. Watching this feels like an episode of "Columbo." We are shown the crime, we know who committed it, and the entertainment is supposed to come from the detective work. In this film, the sexual tension and flirtation are intended to be entertaining, but they aren't. The chess scene seems childish, the lengthy kiss doesn’t feel that long, and concludes with another of Jewison’s gimmicks. "The Windmills of Your Mind" is among the worst Best Song Academy Award winners ever. It sounded like it was recorded in a bathroom while the singer cleared their throat and the orchestra tuned up. Michel Legrand seems unsure whether this film should be a Hollywood romance from two decades prior, or a modern movie challenging those conventions. He’s all over the place. In conclusion, Crown's reason for everything is that he’s simply bored – I can relate to that feeling. As Dunaway struggles to hold back tears at the end, displaying the only genuine emotion in "The Thomas Crown Affair," I choked back my popcorn and signaled for the remote control to be turned off.

Source on TMDB