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The Thomas Crown Affair
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - MGM Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (17th May 2010). |
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The Film
 In my short time here at DVD Compare I think I’ve established my genuine dislike for remakes. But, particularly in my review for the abysmal catastrophe also known as “Fame” (2009), I think I’ve also revealed that my hate for the remake is not something universal, unchanging or without exception. There are certainly remakes that I like, and a few even that I find to be vastly superior to the original in almost everyway. One such film is 1999's “The Thomas Crown Affair”, based in part on the Norman Jewison directed, Alan Trustman authored film from 1968 of the same name. The original starred Steve McQueen as the titular Crown, a banker who planned to steal $5 million just for the fun of it, and Faye Dunaway as his romantic foil. The now decade old film reviewed here is more of a reinterpretation than a straight up remake of that original, and is better for it. Differences between the two films abound: for one, Crown, played by Pierce Brosnan, doesn’t want to rob a bank, and steal money – he doesn’t need to, because he’s already an entrepreneurial billionaire – but is rather infatuated with stealing priceless works of art that he would otherwise not be able to acquire, even with his considerable bank account. Stepping in for Dunaway's Vicki Anderson is Renee Russo, who plays Catherine Banning, an insurance investigator hired by the foreign owners of a rare painting that Crown steals in the first 15 minutes via an exquisitely choreographed opening sequence. Banning and Crown engage in a cat and mouse game, each trying to outsmart the other, only to realize that their nemesis is both their intellectual, and sexual, equal; a revelation that is much to the displeasure to Russo’s character and delight to Brosnan’s. The two actors show real chemistry; a raw, natural connection, that is much more alluring than McQueen and Dunaway’s much less captivating repartee. Part of the reason that the remake works so well is in the casting and connection between the two leads. Brosnan plays Crown much smoother, Russo, sexier, than either of their counterparts in the older film. The smart casting doesn’t end with Brosnan and Russo. Denis Leary appears as a hard-nosed, acerbic NYPD detective Michael McMann – a role that he would all but copy-paste into the short-lived TV series “The Job” (2001-2002) – who assists Banning in her search for the stolen painting. And Faye Dunaway has a not-so-brief cameo as Crown’s knowing psychiatrist. John McTiernan and his director of photography Tom Priestley paint a beautifully stylish, exotic ascetic, framing the film against gorgeous backdrops, including an extended interlude in scenic Martinique. Crown’s therapy sessions, peppered throughout the film, provide wonderfully esoteric, surreal side-points to the overarching narrative, cast in near darkness with minimal light only reflecting on the faces of Brosnan and Dunaway. It’s artfully done and brilliantly simplistic. The biggest surprise with the film though is not it’s visuals, or it’s performances, or even it’s story – although the film excels in all of those areas too. No, clearly the standout is director John McTiernan. Who would have thought that the creative force behind such uber-machismo films as “Predator” (1987), “Die Hard” (1988), “The Hunt for Red October” (1990) and “The Last Action Hero” (1993) could produce a film with such subtlety, sensuality and restraint. “Thomas Crown” certainly isn’t a film without flaws. One of the most grating coming early, in the form of a rather large plot hole involving Banning’s use of CCTV footage to catch the then unknown thief, but even that, and the few missteps in the final act, can’t taint what is overall a very well made, enjoyable, and just plain good motion picture. “Crown” is definitely a film meant for a more mature audience (if not exactly an older one), best enjoyed by people who don’t need over the top explosions, and can tolerate the slow burn nature of Banning and Crown’s fire and ice relationship. For those who can, prepare to be rewarded – “The Thomas Crown Affair” is the rare remake that is better than the picture on which it is based.
Video
I honestly can’t imagine “The Thomas Crown Affair” looking any better than it does on Blu-ray. The new 1080p 24/fps AVC MPEG-4 encoded transfer has an average bitrate of 32 Mbps, and the film itself takes up nearly 40 gigs of the dual layer BD-50 on which it resides. Tech specs aside, the film looks excellent, remaining both faithful to the original vision of director John McTiernan and his director of photography Tom Priestley while simultaneously providing a luxuriant, colorful and inviting high def atmosphere that is sure to please fans and newcomers alike. Colors are rich and bold, especially in certain splashes, from reds, yellows and earth tones of clothing and suits, to the greens of the trees and the watery-blues of the Martinique beachside sequences. Whites are clean and bright. Contrast, stable and supple; exteriors, such as the aforementioned beach scenes are clear and the sky features a wide array of color variance – nothing is over-blown or washed out. Interiors, like the museum, Crowns office building or the police station all are a little darker, but nothing gets lost – pinstripes on dark suits never disappear, and the differences between black and an exceedingly dark blue are clear as day, which is truly a testament to the transfers ability to showcase a wide use of the color spectrum. Blacks are deep and consistent, which adds weight to the image and gives it plenty of appreciable depth. Detail is exceptional to good throughout the entire runtime, and edge definition, sharpness and clarity all improve drastically over the included standard def DVD. McTiernan and Priestly shot “Thomas Crown” anamorphically with genuine Panavision glass and not with the Super35 process or on high definition video, so many scenes do have a slight softness to them, differing the films look from many of it’s contemporaries. I’ve discussed this in previous reviews, but true anamorphic films, particularly in mid-range shots, appear a little less defined because of a shallow depth of field, which leaves backgrounds fuzzy and less distinct and items that aren’t perfectly within that field usually have a softer, less focused quality; this is true of many mid-shots in this film. But, fret not – close ups are definitely rewarding and even Russo’s face reveals plenty of pores and texture (surprisingly she isn’t shot in a softer focus than anyone else.) Wide-shot stuff lensed beautifully and making excellent use of the expansive 2.35:1 cinemascope frame, is crisp enough that you easily read individual bits of text off of the banners that adorn the museum façade. As I said in my review of the film itself, the cinematography is simply gorgeous and McTiernan and his DP provide an almost painterly quality to many of the more picturesque sequences. When Crown and Banning take to the skies in the formers glider – the stark white-winged vehicle all birdlike and wonderful – they fly over a patch of yellow, red, golden and brown topped trees in upstate New York and the wholeness of the imagery is absolutely gorgeous. Similar bursts of artistic landscapes and elegant, intimate moments between Crown and Banning, shot with intrusive shadow, transcend simple film and look like works of art. Slight softness aside, the Blu-ray is a positively wonderful thing. I noticed a few specks in the opening minutes of the film, but they were brief and thankfully the print is otherwise pristine and clean. Likewise, a light dusting of film grain is present, giving “Thomas Crown” a film-like texture, but it’s barely noticeable because the slow-speed stock on which it was shot is so finely grain anyway. The disc is fortunately free of noise reduction and edge enhancement and the spacious encode is absolutely perfect with no burst of noise or artifacts. Even in the films climax, which features a room full of usually troublesome smoke, I noticed not a millisecond of banding. Truly, this is the best “The Thomas Crown Affair” has ever, and probably will ever look.
Audio
“Thomas Crown” features an almost-absurd amount of language options on Blu-ray. The default DTS-HD Master Audio (48 kHz/24-bit/4.2Mbps) track is in English, while a slew of lossy DTS 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit/768 kbps) dubs are available in Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Castilian, and Portuguese (this track oddly is actually of the rarer 1.5 Mbps DTS flavor), and lesser 2.0 Dolby Digital surround (48kHz/224kbps) options are included for Hungarian, Thai, Russian and Turkish. For the purposes of this review I listened to the lossless mix, what I assume will be the preferred option for most viewers as it’s the films original language. For a film that darts off to exotic locales, puts it’s characters in busied museums, dinner parties and even a ballroom or too, “The Thomas Crown Affair” is surprisingly – dare I say a little disappointingly – light on rear speaker atmosphere. Surrounds rarely see action, and despite it’s caper origins, the flick hardly sports any real sort of bombast or power. But, that’s not to say that the film isn’t a strong, if incredibly nuanced auditory experience. Dialogue, even the most intimate of hushed whispers, is crystal clear. Clarity, depth and fidelity are all strong, welcomed aspects of the soundtrack, and while the film uses it’s rears sparingly, there are a few (brief) “action” (if you can call them that) scenes to wet the appetite – Crowns catamaran antics and glider-centered wooing of Ms. Banning in particular, funnel wind and waves into the surrounds. The standout here is undoubtedly Bill Conti’s score – it’s jazzy, piano cues are clear, precise, and robust, more than making up for the other less impressive elements of the soundtrack by providing full-bodied, enveloping warmth across all 6-channels. In direct comparison with the included DVD's Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, the Blu-ray provides a more powerful, crisp and satisfying sound. Subtitles are also plentiful, with options for: English, Bulgarian, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish. All subtitles appear within the active 2.35:1 widescreen image, with text no lower than just above the bottom letterbox.
Extras
Grrrrrr. Okay, time for a little rant. For a little over a year MGM has been releasing many of it’s catalogue films (via Fox) in Blu-ray + DVD “Combo” packs. In some cases, such as “The Princess Bride” (1987), the distributor includes a copy of the film on DVD merely as an extra gift to the purchaser. The inclusion of a DVD is not a necessity because all of the supplements (commentaries, featurettes, and whatever else) are actually encoded on the physical Blu-ray itself. In cases like this the second disc is wholly unnecessary but what the hell, it’s nice of them to include the DVD so that the kids can watch the film in the minivan or whatever. Next, we have the slightly more sinister type of BD+DVD combo – when it’s used as an easy way to reuse an anciently encoded Blu-ray, and to (sort of) include all of the extras from a previous DVD edition, by also putting that previous DVD edition in the same box, thus creating a flawed, but “complete” release. MGM includes an MPEG-2 encoded, single layered BD-25 copy of a film in high definition, likely minted and pressed years ago (only to sit in a warehouse for months to years on end), and then packs in one of their extras-laden DVD's from many years back. Fine…ish. I can’t say I condone it, but I understand why these types of discs exist. The money has already been spent to master and press the high def release in 2006/early 2007, and in the case of something like “Road House” (1989), “Navy Seals” (1990) or “Rollerball” (2002), I seriously doubt the title will be a good enough seller to justify the reauthoring of an AVC encoded Blu-ray disc with the extras carried over from an old DVD to the actual Blu-ray. Fans get the film in HD and technically still have the extras – an imperfect solution to a less than ideal “problem.” (On a side note, I do think that “The Graduate” (1967), which was released in this fashion, deserves better, but that’s neither here nor there). But, the worst type of BD+DVD combo is what we get here in “The Thomas Crown Affair.” The film sports a brand new BD-50 optimized AVC MPEG-4 high definition encode, and was, based on specs alone, obviously authored rather recently – at the vary least minted sometime after Fox and MGM initiated their policy of AVC encoding (and dual layer discs for nearly) all releases. Why then doesn’t this Blu-ray include the bonus material from the DVD edition on the actual Blu-ray itself, like other recently completed Blu-ray discs like “The Princess Bride” or “Spaceballs”? Even more maddeningly, why is this Blu-ray barebones when all they needed to do was insert the lone DVD extra, an audio commentary, into a secondary audio stream of the new disc? Surely it’s hasn’t been ported because of some excuse about bandwidth, right – no, that can’t be it, and if it is, that’s BS, because the film includes a copious amount of – no less than 11 – lossy DTS and Dolby dubs and has room to spare. No, the only reason for the lack of the commentary on the Blu-ray disc is laziness and this practice needs to STOP. Now. MGM is ruining too many great Blu-ray’s like “Misery” (1990), “To Live and Die in LA” (1985), and now “Thomas Crown”, which have brand-new splendidly film-like HD transfers, because of this policy of not porting over the commentaries and featurettes from other discs, and it just plain pisses me off. The extra DVD gives us the features, true, but there’s no reason that extras can’t be ported over on a newly authored Blu-ray. With that (tedious rant) out of the way, lets look at the package a little closer: DISC ONE: BLU-RAY No extras are included on this disc. Nothing. At. All. Not even the theatrical trailer. DISC TWO: DVD Disc two is the exact same dual sided DVD-18 copy of the film released by MGM a little over a decade ago. It includes both a 16x9-enhanced 2.35:1 widescreen transfer (on side A) and a 4x3 “standard” Pan and Scan transfer (Side B) of the film. Both sides include: An audio commentary with director John McTiernan. This is an acceptable track if a dry one; the director is reserved but proves to be informative, talking about both technical and non-technical aspects of the production. It’s best left to true fans of the film – though, maybe even less than that, as you have to sit through the SD rendering of the film to access it (which is freaking ridiculous). Also included are a few “Thomas Crown” trailers. A theatrical trailer for the remake, running 2 minutes 11 seconds and a bonus trailer for the original 1968 version, running 2 minutes 8 seconds, finishes off the standard def disc. Not included on the R1 disc (nor the Blu-ray), and exclusive to the R2/R4 releases are a near-25-minute “Making of” featurette and a Sting music video for his rendition of “Windmills of Your Mind.” Both are truthfully minor supplements, but again the availability of material that could have appeared on the Blu-ray just adds to my distaste for the barebones Blu-ray.
Packaging
This is a 2-disc BD+DVD Combo set. Unlike some of the distributors other BD+DVD re-releases in recent months (“Speed” (1994), “The Graduate” (1967), “Ice Age” (2002), “Robocop” (1987), “The Usual Suspects” (1995) and many other films that they’ve reissued as “Combos”, but in DVD sized cases), “The Thomas Crown Affair” is packaged inside a standard Blu-ray sized Elite style box. I’m not sure weather this will be true for all retail versions, but my copy from the studio came in a non-Eco Elite case. Hopefully this will be the packaging for others as well, as I find cases of the “eco” variety to be too flimsy, especially when they hold two or more discs. The first disc, a dual layered BD-50 houses the film in high definition and is, despite a logo on the rear artwork that states the contrary, region free. The second disc, a dual-sided DVD-18 includes the film in standard definition (4x3 on one side; anamorphic 2.35:1 on the other) with an audio commentary. The DVD is coded for Region 1.
Overall
Let me count the ways I like this release: 1) the film is quite good (and I actually like it better than the original). 2) MGM’s new AVC encoded 1080p transfer and 5.1 DTS-HD MA lossless tracks take the A/V qualities of “The Thomas Crown Affair” to heights previously unreached on home video. 3) The MSRP is actually not totally unreasonable. That all sounds pretty good, right? Well, now, for the bad news: MGM didn’t port over the one single solitary extra from the R1 DVD – a decent enough commentary track – and that just smacks of laziness and disrespect for the consumer. Recommended, but boy does this “extra DVD” business piss me off.
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