Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary, Esther Canadas, Frankie Faison Directed by John McTiernan. Produced by Pierce Brosnan, Beau St. Clair. Written by Leslie Dixon, Kurt Wimmer. Distributed by MGM/UA.

He's got more money than he knows what to do with and he regularly seems to end up on the top of big business dealings, outsmarting the other side, even as they think they've accomplished the coup. Smart, rich, good-looking, and uncommitted.

So Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) plans art thefts to obtain the otherwise unobtainable: the Metropolitan Museum of Art does not often de-accession its Monets. Crown loves the art, but he loves the challenge of the caper more.

With Crown being the richest and most elegant person around, Banning quickly fixes on her quarry and, as in the original, lets him know that he's her main suspect. The rest of the film is a cat-and-mouse game between the two.

Banning and Crown become romantically involved, even as she continues her relentless pursuit of the stolen painting, infusing both their personal and professional interactions with gamesmanship.

Enter the beautiful, sexy, and equally intelligent insurance investigator, Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), who almost instantly makes the NYPD look like chopped liver. She quickly zeroes in on Crown as the perpetrator, and in the utterly civilized manner of a long line of romance/caper movies, she investigates, woos, and falls in love, all at the same time.