Thomas Crown Affair, The MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +3 1/2 Content: -3

Pierce Brosnan explodes on the screen as Thomas Crown, a sort of James Bond alter ego. Crown is a wealthy financier and corporate shark by occupation and a thrill-seeking art collector on the side. Hoisting a $100 million Monet from a museum is Crowns idea of a good time, but the museums insurance company and the police are not amused. Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) steps in along with the police Detective McCann (Denis Leary) to investigate the crime, but only Banning is convinced that Crown is the mastermind behind it. Determined to get closer to Crown, in order to trip him up and recover the stolen masterpiece, she gets a little too close and finds herself caring for him. If she recovers the Monet, she will receive a sizable sum from the insurance company as reward. But Mr. Crown can offer so much more more money, more excitement, more pleasure than she ever dreamed possible. THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, like a Monet painting, is breathtaking to behold. Brosnan and Russo work seamlessly together, generating an excitement and passion that is sure to bring the house down.

CROWN has all the ingredients that make a movie worth seeing: mystery, intrigue, romance, action, and humor. But it also has too many of the things that make many current movies hard to swallow. While the film refrains from graphic violence, it includes several prolonged scenes of nudity and a gratuitous scene of sexual intercourse between Crown and Banning. This sex scene shows both female breast and rear nudity and male rear nudity, and another scene implies sex with the two nude in bed. And Banning is shown in various stages of undress throughout the film, in a towel with breasts exposed from the side, on the beach with frontal breast nudity, and in a see-through dress while dancing. Foul language is also excessive with 14 obscenities and 7 regular profanities. Crown lives a fast and free lifestyle marked by excess, but he does manage to do at least one right thing in the end. However, THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, unlike its classic predecessor by the same name, paints too graphic a picture of such excess.

Preview Reviewer: Cliff McNeely
Distributor: MGM/UA, 2500 Broadway St., Santa Monica, CA 90404-3061, (310) 449-3000