Movie Fodder

Release Year: 1968

Director: Norman Jewison

Review: Steve McQueen is cool.  There was no reason to have an entire movie based solely around this characteristic.  In 'The Thomas Crown Affair' McQueen plays a millionaire who organizes a bank heist for the thrills, and the police trying to pin it on him.  There is very little plot wise here.  We're just left to bask in the coolness of McQueen and I guess envy him.  It's shot in a very stylized manner which also heavily dates it.  The shot sequences feel extremely overdone and are seemingly meritless.  There is one shot between Dunaway and McQueen playing chess.  The scene wants to badly to be a powerful, meaningful moment, but is ruined by the heavy-handedness of the direction and cinematography.  It starts off fine with beautiful close ups of Dunaway and McQueen, but then gets absurd when the scene would not end and is shot from every conceivable angle as it derails into a corny parody of itself.  There's something to be said about subtlety which this film completely ignores. There are a handful of scenes where its fun to just enjoy McQueen being McQueen, but it all was just over the top with no substance to be enjoyable.
Rating: 2/5