Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Laura is an exec at the london diamond corporation who finds herself stifled on the corporate ladder. Hobbs is the equally overlooked night janitor with intimate knowledge of the security & a score to settle with the corporation. Sensing lauras frustration hobbs convinces her to help him pull off a heist. Studio: Magnolia Pict Hm Ent Release Date: 06/03/2008 Starring: Michael Caine Demi Moore Run time: 109 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Michael Radford

Amazon.com:
It would be overpraise to propose that Flawless reviews itself with its title, but... how about "supremely decorous"? It is, at any rate, a film that merits a grateful salute from audiences weary of being beaten about the head and shoulders in pursuit of an engrossing caper movie. A plot to make off with a fortune in gems from England's premier diamond company unfolds without explosions, vrooming vehicles, or rapid-fire shootouts. It's like a feature-length variation on those sly, soft-spoken Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes of the '50s, with the patient accumulation of mood, detail and character leading to wry twists and satisfying revelations. We are in 1960 and a London not yet disposed to swing. Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), the lone female officer of London Diamond Corporation, is smarter and more capable than her male colleagues, but that doesn't deter the company from promoting them over her while profiting from her talents. This has long since gotten old, so when Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine), the mild-mannered night janitor, enlists her in a scheme to fill his thermos with two million pounds' worth of diamonds from the vault, she listens. Suffice it to say that the vault is penetrated according to plan--and then the real tension sets in. Things are not what they seem, even to those supposedly in the know (us, for instance), and distrust springs up between the conspirators as they find themselves under close scrutiny by a steely investigator (Lambert Wilson).

All this is intelligently scripted by Edward A. Anderson (a maiden effort) and directed by Michael Radford with a crisp, unostentatious eye; the cold interiors of the Lon Di headquarters, generically oppressive on first sight, take on a nuanced familiarity as the place where, for the most part, Laura Quinn spends her life. Demi Moore--scarlet lips in a black-and-grey world--admirably catches Laura's not-quite-smothered ambition and frustration without breaking her cover, as it were. Michael Caine couldn't be better as Hobbs, an invisible man in plain sight (how many viewers fail to notice his first appearance in the film?); he's the master of his trade, but you knew that. There's a framing story, set more or less in the present, which seems to be an obligatory bow to feminism but sets up a tease or two of its own, then adds yet another twist to the proceedings. --Richard T. Jameson

Rating : - "Flawless" Has More Than Its Share of Flaws
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.