Flawless (2007)

In full, adorable Cockney glory, Michael Caine plays a janitor in Flawless. He works in for London Diamonds, and he's a reliable staple in the building—no one would ever suspect he'd do anything wrong. One day, he approaches Demi Moore—whose British accent isn't nearly as adorable or believable—and asks if she wants to be a part of a robbery he's planning. She's the only female executive and doesn't get the credit she's due, so he figures she's angry enough to take what she's earned.Let's face it, without Michael Caine, this would be a mediocre heist movie. You might not even be rooting for the leads. But Michael Caine is in the movie, so you've got someone completely likable and charming to root for. While most heist movies are filmed in a lightweight style, with flashy cuts, upbeat music, and bright colors, this one is on the darker side. It's set in the sixties, so director Michael Radford filmed in deep, saturated colors and reflected the gloomy weather of London by using lots of darks and grays. It's a new and welcome change to the heist genre, and it makes all the difference in turning Flawless into a classy film.

A reporter comes to interview Laura Quinn (Demi Moore) as a woman manager in a man's world from the old days. Laura pulls out a giant diamond and retells the story of when she stole it back in 1960 London. Laura is frustrated as the lone female executive at London Diamond Corporation having been passed over yet again. Hobbs the janitor (Michael Caine) approaches her with a plan to steal some diamonds from the vault. When Hobbs takes the plan to an unexpected way, insurance investigator Finch (Lambert Wilson) is suspicious and Laura is trapped.Demi Moore always speaks deliberately with a smoky voice and I don't mind her British accent. Director Michael Radford has created a good sense of an era but the caper lacks a certain energy or power. It's a slow moving film where Michael Caine shows his brilliance. He is very convincing in every word he speaks. It's a little film that is well made enough. The caper is simplistic and has the feel of the truth.

This movie was horrible. What "could" have been a decent flick turned into a nonsensical movie that cared much more about getting a leftist "message" to us dumb bumpkins out in fly over country than entertaining us with a decent quality movie.1. Woman are smarter 2. Woman work harder 3. Woman care more 4. Woman getting repressed 5. Fat white guys with cigars are evil 6. Evil Corporations greedily stashing money from the people 7. Robinhood syndrome 8. Making the script fit your Political narrative at every scene. Why did the investigator let her go? Nobody noticed this woman spending a 100m lbs?As bad of hidden leftist dribble as I've ever seen in my life. Time these elitists learn a hard lesson...The Nazi's would be proud of today's Hollyweird...

The movie opens with a scene of raw diamonds being dug out of mud, selected, cut, polished, then mounted for the finger of a lucky lady. That is the subject of the movie, the world-wide diamond industry, and one company, London Diamonds that controls the diamond supply for most of the world.After this introduction we see Demi Moore as Laura in present time, made up to look like a 90-something lady. She is meeting with a 20-something feature writer who wants to know how she broke into management, a pioneer of sorts for women in that industry. She presents a very large, "flawless" diamond, that she says the "stole from the company" and "this is the first time in 40 years I have been in this city as a free woman." But most of the story takes place in the early 1960s, as Laura has been with the company for 15 years, an American educated in England and with a brilliant mind. But the good-old-boy network kept passing her by for promotions. So the long time janitor, Michael Caine as Hobbs, comes to recognize her dissatisfaction and tries to enlist her help, to pull off a heist from the vault. She is reluctant but soon gives in.The opening scene tells us a heist did occur, it leads us to believe Laura spent time in prison, but not all is as it seems. The story unfolds deliberately, and is very interesting. Well worth a watch.SPOILERS: Laura's job is to steal the safe code, which she does at an evening cocktail party at the CEO's mansion. But instead of stealing just a few million worth of diamonds, Hobbs manages to steal all of them, very large quantities of raw and rare cut specimens. Laura is puzzled, but eventually figures out he put them down a drain, and she found them in the sewer below the street. However too late to prevent a ransom being paid to his numbered Swiss account by the company that insured London Diamonds. His motive was to ruin the head of the insurance company who, years earlier had been responsible for denying private insurance coverage for his sick wife who died of cancer that could have been treated. He also sent 100 Million pounds to Laura's account, and it took her 40 years to give it away, to various charitable causes. But she kept the perfect diamond she found that night in the sewer along with the other diamonds. She just didn't tell about this one. Hobbs disappeared all those years ago and was never heard from again.