The Thomas Crown Affair

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The Thomas Crown Affair
Original title The Thomas Crown Affair
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1999
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director John McTiernan
script Leslie Dixon
Kurt Wimmer
production Beau St. Clair
Pierce Brosnan
music Bill Conti
camera Tom Priestley Junior
cut John Wright
occupation

The Thomas Crown Affair (Original title: The Thomas Crown Affair ) is an American crime film from 1999 by director John McTiernan with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in the lead roles. It is a remake of the 1968 film Thomas Crown is unbelievable .

action

Thomas Crown is a Wall Street financier who purchases equity investments through his company Crown Acquisitions and sells them at a profit. Away from business, he kills himself with all sorts of activities, trying to find thrills and a worthy opponent. Therefore, with meticulous preparation and with a diversionary maneuver by a simultaneous second robbery attempt, he steals a 100 million US dollar painting by Claude Monet from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a spectacular way . He thwarted the second coup himself.

Insurance detective Catherine Banning appears alongside Detective Michael McCann, who has been called to work on the case. She notices the contradictions at the scene and exposes the diversionary maneuver. “This is an elegant crime, committed by an elegant person.” She recognizes this person in the alleged witness Thomas Crown, whom she meets at the police station, where he gave his testimony. When she finds the name Crowns on a list of Monet painting auctions, she is sure he is that person. At a reception at which Crown gives a painting to the museum on loan, Banning contacts him and in no way hides her intentions: "It's about your head, Mr. Crown." The attractive and intelligent woman fascinates Crown. He sees her as a "worthy opponent" and invites her to dinner.

McCann is not very enthusiastic about Banning's approach, but it is clarified: "I'll play with him for a while." Meanwhile, a house search at Crown remains unsuccessful. Crown also plays with Banning, gets closer to her and finally spends a night with her. He takes her to his estate in Martinique , but otherwise he never does. Also included is a wooden box the size of the painting you are looking for. Banning resists the temptation to look inside. She finally throws the box into the fire. “It's all just a game.” When McCann shows Banning pictures of Crown and a blonde woman, she becomes jealous. She breaks in at Crown and proudly presents the Monet, which turns out to be a fake. However, it turns out that the forgery is also exact at the edges that are otherwise covered by the frame, so the forger copied from the unframed original.

Banning tries to warn Crown and meets the blonde at his place. He offers her to flee with him or to have him arrested later in the museum. Banning is at a loss and finally turns to the police. There she learns that the blonde used to be Crown's ward - and is a talented forger. In an ingenious confusion with a multitude of doppelgangers, Crown shakes off the police in the museum, steals another picture and reveals his loan as the stolen Monet by means of a sprinkler system that washes off the water color that was painted over the picture. McCann sums up Banning: "Then he knew all along that you would betray him." He does not see a dangerous criminal in Crown and will therefore not pursue him particularly vigorously, because it is all about "splashes of paint on canvas." Get him from me. "

Banning rushes to the meeting point, where only a messenger is waiting for her to hand her the new loot. She leaves the picture at the airport with a request to hand it over to the police and leaves the country. When she starts crying on the plane, Crown hands her a handkerchief from the back row. She climbs back, works him with her fists and finally falls into his arms.

background

Faye Dunaway appears in the film as Thomas Crown's psychiatrist. Dunaway played the female lead in the original 1968 film adaptation.

In the film, Catherine Banning conducts an interrogation with a suspect, apparently in Romanian. In the original English version, however, she speaks German with the suspect in the scene, which was not translated or subtitled in the English version. In the audio commentary, the director explained that subtitles only distracted viewers and that the scene could also be understood without translation.

The paintings shown in the film, both in the museum and in Crown House, are all copies of the French company Troubetzkoy Paintings Ltd . In total, over 150 paintings were copied for the film. The picture that Thomas Crown steals is San Giorgio Maggiore (Venice) at Dusk by Claude Monet . The second stolen painting is the banks of the Seine at Argenteuil by Édouard Manet . Crowns favorite picture in the museum (nicknamed "haystack"), is siesta (after Millet ) by Vincent van Gogh . In the film, also is to see a man with an apple in front of the face at various points the image, it is the Son of Man by Rene Magritte . Catherine Banning's joke at the end of the film that she would break both arms of Crown also relates to this image: the man's left arm in Magritte's picture is unnaturally twisted, the elbow joint is pushed forward.

A Duo Discus from the German sailplane manufacturer Schempp-Hirth was used for the gliding scene . The close-ups were taken with a modified cockpit in front of a blue screen in the studio.

In 1982, Brosnan played the lead role in the television series Remington Steele . In episode 15 of the first season he compares - as so often - the current case with one of the classic films. He plays on Thomas Crown is unbelievable with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway .

Film music

The film music was composed by Bill Conti . The 1968 Oscar-winning theme of the original film The Windmills of Your Mind is interpreted by Sting . The American spiritual Sinnerman , sung by Nina Simone , appears as a recurring motif in the film .

Reviews

  • Lexicon of international film : “Remake of the crime comedy with Steve McQueen from 1967. Like the model with some irony, the film lives mainly from the exchange of blows between the main characters and from some cleverly staged action scenes. Atmospheric sequences such as the depiction of the life circumstances of the art thief, which are important for the structure of the role, are less successful. "
  • Regine Welsch wrote on artechock.de: “Every shot at McTiernan is like a painting, is a study of colors and light. His Thomas Crown Affair is a studio film and it becomes particularly exciting when you look at the paintings Thomas Crown collects, the painters he admires. A Monet is the object of his desire and for the Impressionists, as for McTiernan, it had a special connection with the closed rooms, the studios. [...] Film makes the invisible visible, as it were surrealistic, which is why in the grand finale at McTiernan a picture of Magritte comes into play as if it had come to life, a truly moving picture. "
  • Flemming Schock wrote on filmspiegel.de: “Since it is clear from the outset that the affinity between over-bonze and detective […] inevitably leads to the act of union, the tension curve is proportional to the tasteless degree of luxury. […] An involuntary performance: the audience is shown by way of example how pomp and splendor fuel degeneration. There is no more romance than new ideas, erotic only because René Russo lets her sensuality play and Brosnan exposes his animal carpet of chest hair. […] All in all, the exuberance of opulence is only slightly weakened by the down-to-earth Dennis Leary as a naturally likable bull. The only short-lived ray of hope is then the resolution of the question of the whereabouts of the stolen image, which does not change the fact that most of the film is as trivial as the realization that wealth can also bring about poverty. "
  • Gunter Göckenjan wrote in the Berliner Zeitung : “You can enjoy this film like an exotic cocktail under palm trees. It is quite possible that there is a little too much sugar in it, obviously our clear judgment is also slightly clouded by it, but it is a pleasure after all. […] McTiernan's 'The Thomas Crown Affair' is one of the few revisions of old Hollywood films that deserve to be recognized as an independent achievement. Instead of limiting oneself to finding new faces for old roles, the story as well as the characters and the mood for our time have been reinvented here. "
  • At Rotten Tomatoes , the film received a positive rating in 70 percent of a total of 102 reviews.

Awards

Pierce Brosnan and Denis Leary won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Most Popular Actors in 2000, and Rene Russo was nominated for the Most Popular Actress Award. Bill Conti was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award 2000 for his film music .

The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In: Business Week ( Memento from September 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ The Thomas Crown Affair. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ artechock.de
  4. ↑ filmspiegel.de
  5. ↑ Gunter Göckenjan: The elegant game of an oversaturated . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 2, 1999
  6. ^ The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999 Rotten Tomatoes, accessed December 14, 2018