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Movie Review: Flawless
by Bill Wine
In 1960 London, a soon-to-retire janitor suggests to a female executive, who's been passed over for a promotion yet again, that they steal diamonds from their employer.
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Crime drama
RELEASE DATE: March 28, 2008
RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes
VIOLENCE FACTOR: Although the threat of violence does come up at one point, the crime depicted is not violent in any way.
BAD WORDS: A few briefly uttered obscenities
RACY? Not at all
GRANDS:
CRITIQUE:
If you've recently exited a movie muttering, "They don’t make them the way they used to," you might want to drop in on Flawless. And bring your internet-era grandchildren with you, who'll be introduced to the movie style of the good old days.
While the film won’t completely live up to its title, it does, at least, eschew the instant-gratification imperative in so much of today's Hollywood product, allowing its story breathe and resonate. And that's plenty. Flawless is a crackerjack heist thriller with a pocketful of narrative twists that takes its time, wins you over, and gets it right. Michael Caine and Demi Moore — who played father and daughter a generation ago in Blame It On Rio — are unlikely allies who team up to rob their employer, the London Diamond Corporation, of two million pounds worth of diamonds.
That's so little, says he, they won't even miss it. That's so much, says she, I'll have no part of it. Yeah, well, we'll see about that — on both counts.
Moore plays the corporation's only female executive, bitter about the glass ceiling that has resulted in a parade of lesser male execs being promoted ahead of her. Caine is the shambling, silent, essentially invisible nighttime janitor about to retire. He proposes a bold plan to sneak in during his work shift and fill his thermos with diamonds, after she gets the combination to the vault. But his scheme isn't flawless, and the two of them sweat to survive the immediate and intense insurance investigation that follows.
Director Michael Radford fills the robbery sequence with exquisite suspense, and the script manages to add sociopolitical context without climbing onto a soapbox. Best of all, there are narrative quirks and surprises along the way that defy our expectations and bring three-dimensionality to both of the lead characters, each well played.
No diamond in the rough, Flawless is a highly polished, criminally entertaining caper.
GP Rating System:
Three Grands = Bravo, don't miss it.
Two Grands = Good enough, don't dismiss it.
One Grand = Okay, even if we dis it.
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