To Thomas Crown, life is a game -- a game that gets pretty boring when you have no one left to play with.

In The Thomas Crown Affair, Pierce Brosnan plays Crown, a businessman who feels the need to be continuously challenged. But when mergers and acquisitions become mere child's play for the seasoned business veteran, he decides it's time to move onto a different game -- stealing from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The challenge? Whether or not he can actually pull it off.

The twist? What happens when Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), hired by an insurance company to find the painting Crown snatches, is on to him from the very start.

Will she catch him right away or will Crown's game continue?

In typical Brosnan 007 fashion, The Thomas Crown Affair combines the chase of finding the missing painting with the development of a relationship between Crown and Banning. But what makes the movie work is that both of the genres are needed to make the movie what it is.

It's not a mystery with a love story thrown in just to make the movie appeal to a wider array of people.

The relationship between Crown and Banning becomes the most important part of the outcome of the movie. Will finding the artwork be compromised by the relationship between the two?

Crown admires Banning because she can keep up with him.

For the first time in a long time, Crown isn't winning a challenge without a fight.

While the police are easy to fool, Banning doesn't give up as easily. The first night she meets Crown, she accuses him of stealing the painting and vows to find out how he did it and turn him in.

Of course, Banning and Crown continue to get closer and closer, but the great part is you can never tell whether either will stick to winning the challenge before them or give in and fall for each other.

After admitting that he stole the painting and asking Banning to run away with him so the cops don't catch him, it all comes down to an issue of trust.

Can she trust that he's not trying to set her up to get caught by the police instead?

Can he trust that if he promises to return the painting before he runs away, she won't lead the cops to catch him?

And can she trust that after all is said and done, and the challenge of getting her to run away with him is gone, he won't toss her aside?

The movie is one that anyone who likes games and a challenge can respect.

Even the love story in the movie is a game. And, of course, there's the game revolving around the stolen artwork.

How did he steal it, and can he return it to the museum without the police catching him?

And maybe the most important question -- will this challenge be the last he ever takes in the game of life?