Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery

It seems even Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones couldn’t lend sex appeal to the insurance industry.

The two, in the 1999 movie Entrapment, were not exactly hot. In fact, readers of the movie magazine Film voted their love scene the second worst of all time, right after Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci in Casino.

But the rest of the scenes are packed with Bond-style action and Bond-girl duplicity. It’s one long series of treacherous escapes and nearly clever banter, great acrobatics and special effects, which no doubt contributed to its $300 million gross. The reviews were middling, but that never stopped the American public from buying a ticket for a great chase scene.

It’s a familiar insurance movie plot: Mac’s a wealthy thief who steals just for the intellectual challenge, and Virginia is a good-looking young insurance investigator who is posing as an art thief. Or vice versa. Or both. Anyway, Virginia opens the movie working on a crime she herself committed. As part of the job, she chases down the infamous Mac but only to partner with him on a few other larcenous adventures and learn his secrets.

Exquisite OCD planning goes into every heist, with glamorous settings from Mac’s Scottish castle to Kuala Lumpur. Eventually, proximity breeds sexual tension, but it’s hard to believe that the then 30-year-old Zeta-Jones is actually coming on to the 69-year-old Connery. He handles it well.

Though passion and chemistry are both lacking in Entrapment, it is considered Connery’s last romantic role. So far, anyway. He’s only 88, and he’s still looking good.