Demi Moore’s major flaw in “Flawless” is she got out-acted. What can you expect when your competition is Sir Michael Caine? Their characters eventually team up to steal diamonds from their mutual employer in the story. But, more prominently, the consummate English thespian steals today’s carefully stylized, character-driven crime thriller from Moore as its protagonist.
It’s a little like setting cubic zirconia alongside real gems. Moore, ever the movie star, certainly does look the part. Like a Hitchcockian heroine, all brittle private terror beneath the impeccable grooming, she’s shiny-cool indivine period garb playing the proto-feminist executive Laura Quinn in early 1960s corporate London.
Director Michael Radford and screenwriter Edward Anderson compensate for Moore’s inability to completely submerge her celebrity persona into a role by making “Flawless” an engaging, chic and at moments — as such films were then — shamelessly contrived homage to upscale heist dramas of that period.
The ambitious Laura has risen as high in management as any woman is likely to at London Diamond Corporation, the corrupt conglomerate that monopolizes the market for the precious commodity worldwide. The old boys club there is about to give her the boot when the secretly devious company janitor, Mr. Hobbs (Caine), entices Laura with a revenge plan to pilfer from Lon Di’s obscene horde of diamonds in the basement vault.
Much to Laura’s dismay, their modest scheme to make off with a coffee thermos full of a few valuable rocks unexpectedly explodes into a $100 million international incident of theft involving the potential collapse of an entire industry and its greedy underwriters.
A fabulous British cast buttresses a coincidence-laden plot. Besides Caine, who gives yet another seamlessly unaffected performance, the standouts here include Lambert Wilson as the smoothly sexy insurance investigator who suspects the beautiful Laura and the great vet Joss Ackland as the tyrannical CEO of a company in deep trouble.
Less helpful to the proceedings, the narrative unfolds as one long flashback being told by the Laura character to a reporter 40 years after the fact. Unfortunately, that framing device means that Ms.. Moore appears briefly as an elderly woman. Her bad makeup job is a major Glamour “don’t.” One can only imagine what her much younger significant other in real life, Ashton Kutcher, must have thought about that scary glimpse of the possible ghost of his Christmas future.
‘Flawless’
Three Stars
» Starring: Demi Moore,
Michael Caine
» Director: Michael Radford
» Rated PG-13 for brief strong language
» Running time: 108 minutes
