The Stop Button

The first twenty-five minutes of The Thomas Crown Affair is a bank heist. Starting with its planning. After opening titles suggesting the film is about stars Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway doing fashion advertising, we meet future wheelman Jack Weston. Weston gets hired by a mystery man to do a job. We jump forward in time and meet some other mystery men (including a baby Yaphet Kotto), along with McQueen. They're all getting in place for something; he's being a financial wizard guy.

Once the heist starts, we'll learn McQueen is the mastermind behind it all. Director Jewison breaks it out visually, with multiple frames onscreen at once, collaging the various simultaneous perspectives. It's a lot, but Jewison and the dream team crew pull it off. Affair's got Haskell Wexler shooting it; Hal Ashby, Ralph E. Winters, and Byron 'Buzz' Brandt (one of these things is doing its own thing…) editing it. So even though the film changes gears after the heist, when Dunaway comes in, it's still great-looking. Except after that dynamite, one of a kind opening number, the rest of the creative flexes are all in how to do lengthy montages.

The story is about McQueen, a brilliant, rich guy who planned a heist to see if he could do it. Dunaway is the insurance investigator working for the bank. Once she decides he's the guy, she's going to seduce him to get the money. Now, Dunaway does not come into the movie immediately after the heist. After the heist, we meet square-jawed copper Paul Burke. He will be the de facto lead for about fifteen minutes. Why is the timing so important? Because Affair's only got an hour once Dunaway's established. We're forty minutes into the movie before the movie decides what it's going to be.

And what it's going to be is McQueen doing rich guy stuff and living the good life and being genius and Dunaway falling for him. Sort of. Now, Dunaway's late sixties woman willing to trade a little bump and grind when two hundred thousand's on the line. McQueen's a divorced dad who doesn't miss the kids, much less the wife. He's got model Astrid Heeren at his beck and call (she's the same age as Dunaway but seems younger). Burke's a working-class good guy who can't understand why a smart dame like Dunaway would ever trade sex. It's this late sixties and early sixties clash between the two of them, and it's charming. Burke's a solid lug.

Unfortunately, it's more charming than anything Dunaway and McQueen get going. Yes, there's a very well-executed chess game with a bunch of innuendo, but it's like an ad for the Playboy Channel that airs after nine o'clock. It goes a tad too far, but it's trying to be classy. Because they're hot. Thomas Crown Affair is an attempt to sell McQueen as a male movie star as sexy as Dunaway is a female movie star. Thanks to Wexler in particular–McQueen's eyes are something–they pull it off well enough.

So they get hot and bothered in a sweaty way, Burke gets hot and bothered in a mad way, repeat ad nauseam. The film seemingly alternates between opulent wealth sequences, Dunaway doing her work thing (trying to bust McQueen), and her and McQueen having moody, tragic romance scenes.

It does not help the theme song–Noel Harrison's Windmills of the Mind is all about how nothing is happening except the same thing over and over and over again. And over again. Why are the lyrics to your original theme song about how boring your original theme song is?

Anyway.

Of course, they're going to get to the third act, when Dunaway and McQueen finally match wits for the chess game in real life, and we'll get some kind of intricate, elaborate sequence to top the opening heist.

Or one might think. Because Affair does nothing with the third act except manage to drag out a rapid-fire montage sequence. As for the star-crossed romance? Either way, it leaves Dunaway with nothing. It ought to be a post-modern noir, with Dunaway the combination investigator femme fatale. Instead… it's 1968.

Filmmaking-wise–outside the song–Thomas Crown's fantastic. Alan Trustman's script is impressive in what it does and does not accomplish (or attempt). But Burke's too square for the rest of the movie, even if he's good.

McQueen's fine. It's a nothing part. He's intelligent, athletic, charming when he needs to be, broody when he needs to be. He rides horses, flies planes, and just wants the next thrill. Alexander wept and all that jazz. Sometimes, the movie is just about McQueen being bored. And rich.

Bored and rich.

And Dunaway just wants to be bored and rich, too. She's good, but when her character goes to pot in the script, it goes to pot–bad 1968.

There's nothing quite like Thomas Crown Affair–with the filmmaking techniques and fashion angle–but the big swings can't cover everything. Maybe the song. But not everything else and the song.

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