Russo carries `Thomas Crown Affair’

In Theaters

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR

When Rene Russo takes off her clothes in “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a glitzy, charismatic remake of the 1968 original, it not only liberates the actress but also a film that’s unthinkable without her in it.

Russo is the epitome of what this role demands: As Catherine Banning, an insurance investor working to recover a stolen Monet worth $100 million, she’s tough, sexy, intelligent and cunning, reluctantly vulnerable yet fiercely confident and glamorous; she’s like a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Raquel Welch, yet, unlike those actresses, you know that Russo would have no problem rolling around in the mud if she thought she’d have a good time. In that way, she’s like Bette Davis but, unlike Davis, you never sense that Russo would have to own a piece of that mud before plunging into it.

When Russo’s on screen in “Thomas Crown,” the camera seems to exist only for her, which is high praise, considering she shares the film with ersatz movie star Pierce Brosnan, whose thick head of hair, blue eyes and square jaw surprisingly didn’t get second, third or fourth billing.

Together, these two make a great team; indeed, they have better chemistry than Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway had in the original, which isn’t entirely McQueen and Dunaway’s fault. The original’s script was more interested in dune buggy chases and roiling clouds of dust than it was in giving its leads something interesting to say.

Not so with this new version (which nicely features Dunaway in a throwaway role). Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer’s script is a pleasure of smart writing hooked on style; it offers audiences the same rich illusions and exotic locations that keep writers such as Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel on best-sellers lists.

The recent caper film, “Entrapment,” which was also about art heists, did this sort of thing slightly better, but they were also working with a better male lead — Sean Connery, who, nearly 70, is more convincing than Brosnan as a womanizer.

Still, as billionaire Thomas Crown, Brosnan holds his own — he’s supposed to look great in a suit, and he does. That there has never been anything about the actor that suggests depth is actually what makes him perfect for these superficial roles. He’s a showpiece for style, window dressing that moves, a catalyst for illusion in a post-feminist film who needs someone like Russo to rough him up in bed — which she does. And does. And does. And how.

Grade: B+

THE IRON GIANT

Warner Brothers new animated film, “The Iron Giant,” gives audiences real reason to cheer. It boldly steers clear of the Disney formula, which means there isn’t one corny song-and-dance number or cute talking animal to be found within it.

That’s good news for the adults tired of bringing their children to the same old animated film dressed up in new paint, and even better news for children, who are treated to a rich, poignant film about a boy and his relationship with a robot from outer space.

Set in the small, coastal Maine town of Rockwell, “The Iron Giant” takes place in 1957, a time recently explored in “October Sky” when Americans had their heads lifted toward the sky to catch a tiny blip of light known as Sputnik.

In “Giant,” the sky is falling, but it has nothing to do with Sputnik. When a 100-foot robot crashes to earth, 9-year-old Hogarth Hughes (voice of Eli Marienthal) is the first to come upon it and quickly realize every lonely, unpopular boy’s dream — he now has one of the coolest playmates around, one who is powerful and who will do anything Hogarth says.

Loosely based on the 1968 children’s fable written by British poet laureate Ted Hughes, “The Iron Giant” sometimes feels like a reimagining of “E.T.” as it draws in the government to seek out its alien being.

This is, after all, a political, Cold War parable about our nation’s naivete and how a G-man named Kent Mansley (voice of Christopher McDonald) hears about the giant and sees it as a Russian plot to destroy the United States.

Kent’s paranoia is so rampant, it takes the shape of evil, which, in the end, is a bold statement about our country’s state of mind during an era of civil defense warnings, when children were taught to duck and cover as if that would save them from nuclear war.

“The Iron Giant” explores this period with aplomb in a daring, well-told story that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His film reviews appear each Monday and Thursday in the NEWS. Tonight on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he appears in The Video Corner.