|
Flawless | 
 enlarge | Director: Michael Radford
Studio: Magnolia
Category: Movie
Buy New: $2.99
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 209
Genre: Art House
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 109 Minutes
ASIN: B001CWCU4Y
Release Date: December 16, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Synopsis:
Michael Radford (Il Postino and The Merchant of Venice) directs screenwriter Edward Anderson's script about an aging janitor and an American executive who form an unlikely alliance in order to carry out an elaborate jewel heist. Set in 1960s-era London and based on actual events, the tense crime thriller stars Michael Caine as the scheming maintenance man who longs to relieve his employers at the London Diamond Corporation of their valuable inventory, and Demi Moore as the savvy executive who is completely perplexed by the wealthy diamond magnates. |
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Flawless Review January 6, 2009
Shannon Reynolds (Milford, OH United States)
Flawless builds up to a great story very slowly. The concept is great! The execution of the plot is wonderful! Both Demi Moore and Michael Caine are superb in the charaters they play.
If the pace were a bit quicker it would have been a Great Movie!
 "Flawless" is nearly so. December 22, 2008
Steven Hedge (Somewhere "East of Eden")
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a rather quiet "heist" film, but engaging and interesting all the same.
There are no great chases, explosions, or fistfights in the yarn, but it's not boring either. It is a bit slow at times, but it builds to a very satisfying ending. This film is as much about sexism in the workplace as it is a caper film. This film is as much about the respect, or lack thereof, given to people based upon their job position and/or length of service to a company, as it is a crime story. This film is as much a moral tale as it is about an immoral act, stealing.
The cast is first-rate with Demi Moore, picture perfect as an early 1960's Londoner trapped in a position in which she is overqualified and passed over for positions in which she is qualified. She is sexy as ever, but much more understated here. Michael Caine is, as usual, a total class act and very believable as the long-suffering janitor who spies a chance to get what he thinks he deserves.
Now, the plot is not very complicated, but it does have its twists and turns, as any good heist film will have. It's not as smart as it thinks it is, but it isn't dumb either. This is a nice divergence from the more loud heist films we are used to getting from Hollywood. One finds him or herself saying things like, "They don't make films like that anymore" when done viewing this movie.
Flawless? No. Entertaining? A definite yes!
 "Flawless" Has More Than Its Share of Flaws November 28, 2008
Van T. Roberts (Columbus, Mississippi, USA)
The heist thriller "Flawless" concerns not so much the planning and execution of a master crime as it does the scandalous hysteria that erupts in the wake of the theft of one-hundred million pounds worth of diamonds. "Il Postino" director Michael Radford and scenarist Edward Anderson have contrived a cold, antiseptic, humor-free, 1960's period-piece thriller that is polished, pretty to look at, but ostensibly pallid. No, "Flawless" is neither "Rififi" (1954) nor "Topkapi" (1964). "Flawless" won't make your palms perspire in dreadful anticipation. This is a heist movie where the organization is so corrupt itself that we don't care if they get taken to the cleaners and if some of their leaders take a fatal plunge. The diamond company here acquires its stones under shady circumstances that the movie "Blood Diamond" explored with greater depth and melodrama.
The two protagonists, Demi Moore and Michael Caine, are dish rag dull. We sympathize about their respective plights. He has a grief-stricken history involving a wife who died from cancer fifteen years ago owing to hospital insurance complications, and she is an 18-year executive at the Diamond company whose gender works against her in a man's world. The two have struggled their entire lives against an unfair system. Women will lament the sexual discrimination with which the heroine contends, and the casting of Demi Moore is apt, since she starred in the Michael Douglas movie "Disclosure" about reverse sexual discrimination in the workplace. Michael Caine isn't capable of giving a bad performance. Indeed, his lowly, blue collar, Al Capp custodian is probably the only thing flawless about "Flawless." Attention-deficient audiences will tire of this painstaking exercise in larceny.
"Flawless" opens appropriately enough with African-American hands dredging up uncut diamonds from mother earth, and Radford traces the passage that the stones make from anonymity to radiate gems set in a ring on a woman's hand. Indeed, it's a nice way to open a film, but "Flawless" is rather tame as heist thrillers go, and the scrupulous attention to detail that distinguishes this tale becomes tiresome. The plot shifts gears from this opening to a present day sequence in London with an elderly Laura Quinn (Demi Moore of "G.I. Jane") sitting down for an interview about being a role model business woman. The moment that she says she hasn't been in London for 40 years is a red herring to make us think that something else happened. Unfortunately, this misdirection yields little in the way of anxiety. Radford transport us back to the 1960s and we see the stuffed shirts that Quinn works with as the only female executive at the London Diamonds Corporation. A smart, successful, Oxford-educated American she is butting her well-coiffed head against a glass ceiling. She strikes up an unlikely acquaintance with Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine of "The Italian Job") who sees all and knows all as a custodian. People speak freely around him because they discount him as a nobody. Hobbs warns Quinn at one point that she is about to be sacked and she confirms his information in a delightful little sequence.
Hobbs engineers a scheme to steal diamonds. An amusing sequence takes place early in the action when he invites Quinn to a cinema to discuss the plan during a showing of the classic crime caper "The League of Gentlemen" (1960) with Jack Hawkins and Richard Attenborough. This movie effectively establishes a time reference. Meanwhile, the Corporation installs security surveillance cameras that cycle in 60 second blocks to keep track of all corridors including the one in front of a huge vault door. This obstacle presents a challenge that keeps Hobbs on his toes, but overall it works to the detriment of the firm. The flaw is that when the Hobbs character effects entry into the vault, the security guard is so preoccupied with his culinary distractions that he takes his eyes off the security monitors far too long. Meanwhile, Quinn has to scramble from one phone booth to another to make a call that will continue to distract the guard. It seems that in her haste to make the first call, she overlooked the fact that the phone cord had been cut! In the long run, her contribution is disposable. The suspense that Radford generates is mild. Again, it isn't the technology that thwarts the crime as much as the foibles of human nature. Hobbs cleans the place out and the bosses are shocked when they discover their entire inventory has vanished.
Later, after the crime has occurred and a well-dressed investigator, Finch (Lambert Wilson), has been summoned to investigate it, Radford tries to build tension between an anxious Quinn and an obdurate Hobbs. Hobbs refuses to give in. Cigarette puffing Quinn hangs on tenterhooks and fears the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence. Indeed, one breathless moment takes place after the robbery, but unless you are on your toes, you may overlook it. Eventually, in the post-mortem of the crime that Radford presents during the final quarter, we learn how Hobbs disposed of all that ice without lugging it out the door. Unfortunately, the filmmakers must have gambled that their reticence about the whereabouts of the missing stones would tantalize us. It doesn't. Meanwhile, we watch without worry as Quinn runs amok with mild-mannered hysteria trying to find the stones. Hobbs keeps his head in this crisis and comes off as the harmless, old duffer that he pretends, right down to his limp. No, he isn't like the villain of "The Usual Suspects" who was a chameleon. The other revelation about what our heroine has been doing for the last forty years is bittersweet. "Flawless" refuses to let you have your cake and enjoy it, too. In other words, it isn't a lot of fun.
 disappointing November 12, 2008
L. Francis (Calgary, Alberta Canada)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This movie was a surprise. I found it hard to believe that such excellent actors could be part of such a shallow and affected movie. It felt like they were just so impressed with themselves that went through the motions.
Don't bother.
first-class caper film October 19, 2008
Roland E. Zwick (Valencia, Ca USA)
Set in London in 1960, the aptly named "Flawless" features Demi Moore as Laura Quinn, the first woman to become senior negotiator at Lon Di, the world's premier diamond firm. However, Quinn has pretty much hit the glass ceiling career-wise with the company, and when she discovers that she is about to be let go from the firm, she agrees to join forces with the night janitor (Michael Caine) in his plan to rob the vault of a thermos-full of uncut diamonds.
"Flawless" is a good old-fashioned caper tale done with an abundance of wit, intelligence and style and just enough twists and turns in the plot to keep the audience on its toes throughout. Moore and Caine make a perfect team as the duo plotting the heist, while director Michael Radford generates enough suspense for a dozen average thrillers. The script by Edward Anderson even manages to squeeze in some points about early '60's feminism and South African apartheid along the way.
Definitely worth seeing.
|
|
|
 | |
