[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v407/valpy/UKquad.jpg[/IMG]

Norman Jewison's stylish romantic caper, featuring Steve McQueen in a rare cerebral role, is an enjoyably lightweight compendium of '60s film technique.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v407/valpy/ThomasCrown68grab03.jpg[/IMG]

It begins as a cat-and-mouse game between a wealthy businessman (McQueen), who has masterminded a spectacularly complex bank heist for his own amusement, and the brilliant insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway) assigned to the case, but the film slides into a higher gear when they fall for each other.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v407/valpy/ThomasCrown68grab04.jpg[/IMG]

More romance than heist, the film capitalizes on the powerful chemistry of the two stars, who were never photographed as stunningly as they are here by the legendary Haskell Wexler.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v407/valpy/ThomasCrown68grab05.jpg[/IMG]

In a celebrated six-minute set piece, a wordless chess game between the two develops into an increasingly intense pas de deux of visual foreplay; near its climax, a rapt McQueen gazes on while Dunaway contemplatively fondles the head of a bishop. The wariness of the couple, who can never entirely trust one another, only heightens the atmosphere of erotic frisson.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v407/valpy/ThomasCrown68grab06.jpg[/IMG]

Michel Legrand's layers his catchy score with interlocking ostinatos which echo the film's visual motif of circularity, while adding an undercurrent of playfulness.

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The film's adolescent fantasy of omnipotence may have no more substance than a soap bubble, and its frenetic inventory of '60s visual gimmicks can sometimes seem painfully anachronistic, but it remains a skillfully concocted diversion.

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