VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the December 10, 2024 episode of the Video Archives podcast. 

Millionaire Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) needs a new fix. He’s moved on from fast cars and boardroom deals to putting together a bank robbery just because, well, he needs adrenaline.

Investigator Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) is promised 10% of the stolen money by the bank if she can get it back and learn who stole it. She quickly decides that Crown is the only person who could have pulled off this job. Along with detective Eddy Malone (Paul Burke), she closes in, but starts to be enticed by the roguish Crown.

It’s literally — and in a scene, actually — a game of chess.

Sean Connery and Johnny Carson both turned down the lead but only McQueen could pull this off. I’m not certain that audiences today can estimate his level of cool or the breakthrough moments of this movie, like how Vicky drives one of ten Ferrari 275 GTB/4S NART Spiders ever made, has 29 costume changes or that director Norman Jewison made one of the first mainstream uses of Christopher Chapman’s multi-dynamic image technique to show multiple screens of the robbery happening all at once.

Still, Roger Ebert said that this movie was “possibly the most under-plotted, underwritten, over-photographed film of the year. Which is not to say it isn’t great to look at. It is.”

I love the poster line: “McQueen, together with this Bonnie and Clyde Gal…and the slickest gang that ever robbed a bank!”

You can watch this on Tubi.