Let’s start with one of the first things those familiar with The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) might observe of its silky, John McTiernan-directed remake: Pierce Brosnan is a step up from Steve McQueen in the title role. Crown is a respected business magnate who allays the boredom that’s perhaps unavoidable when you can afford anything you want by secretly staging heists. (In the original, Crown fancies banks as targets; in its successor, his marks are comparatively trivial art galleries.) McQueen gives one of his better performances as Crown: his brand of taciturn masculinity works well for a character who has to maintain a poker face in order to keep enjoying his illicit hobby. Brosnan, however, not only appealingly embodies the character’s monied suavity and composure — you can better detect in him the hush-hush pleasures his pastime gives him, see the pleased-with-himself glint in his eye as he pretends like he has nothing to do with art-museum robberies that attract far more media attention than they ought to. 

But if I’m being honest, neither McQueen nor Brosnan are primarily why both Thomas Crown Affairs work so well. They’re delectable because of their luxurious, pretty-to-look-at surfaces and the consonant stylishness with which they’re shot. (The first Affair had an apparently insatiable appetite for innovatively used split-screen technology; the second Thomas Crown prefers the type of appreciative closeups and dynamic cross-cutting that were also part of its forebear’s aesthetic sensibility.) 

They’re also delectable because of their woman leads. In the original, Faye Dunaway is chic and struttingly confident as the insurance investigator hired to look into who might be responsible for the bank heist. She’s a delight to watch, partially because of the character’s gorgeous ways of expressing herself sartorially, as an everyday wonder woman who recalls the kind of sexy, seemingly indomitable sorts of personalities Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn played at their heights. (Dunaway also appears in the remake as Crown’s almost comically unsympathetic shrink.)

Rene Russo and Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair.

In the 1999 film, autumn-maned Rene Russo is nearly as good as Dunaway. She’s more than a little efficient at convincing us that this character could win any argument without raising her voice and show up in any room looking better than everybody else. Russo’s fashions are more muted and monochromatic than Dunaway’s were but no less exquisite; I’m particularly fond of the unfussy but powerful outfit she wears while breaking into Crown’s home one afternoon to snoop around: a black leather jacket, pencil skirt, pair of sunglasses, and knee-high boots that look like they could crush another’s toe without any sweat broken.

In both films, Dunaway’s and Russo’s characters begin affairs with the man they’re supposed to be looking into with objectivity. Toward the end they’ll get soft in a way that can feel disappointing for characters who had until that point been so beguilingly ruthless. But in both movies, the romance before that sizzles, heated by the cranked-up chemistry between the leads and the fact that in movies, romance is often a lot more fun to watch when budding love, or what seems like it, isn’t couched in sentimentality but the possibility of danger.

As it was in the first movie, stylish visual presentation and hot, rich leads engaged in a both risky and ultimately silly game can go a long way when you have a sure-of-themselves director and actors with matching aplomb. But the 1999 Affair eventually does lose steam in a way that its predecessor doesn’t. It’s a little longer; its inevitable, climatic heist feels a little more rushed through. But both movies lead you to a similar conclusion: movies about beautiful rich-people problems aren’t so bad when they’re made with enough verve.