Le casse du siècle

"Flawless" from 2007 is filled with the "bling" of not only diamonds, but of Michael Caine and Demi Moore, the stars of this caper movie.

The story starts in the present day with the elderly Laura giving an interview about female executives of the past. She shows the interviewer an absolutely huge diamond and tells her story.

Her story begins in London at London Diamonds, the largest supplier of diamonds in the world, where Laura (Moore) has a good position but is constantly passed over for promotion into the upper echelon.

One day, the janitor, Hobbs (Caine) tells her that she's going to be fired. She doesn't believe him but finds out by snooping around that it's true.

Hobbs wants her to get the codes to the vault, which are changed weekly. He is then going to enter the vault, fill his thermos with small diamonds, which the company probably won't even miss, and leave. He is going to cut her in.

The next day the executives, including Laura, are called down to the vault. I'll leave it at that, but that was a pretty big thermos.

Really excellent film with a charming, subtle performance by Caine as Hobbs and Moore as the unflappable, cool, beautiful Laura, a career girl at a time when that was much more unusual than it is today.

The story will keep you wondering and intrigued up to the very last frame. Highly recommended. I originally watched this because Nathaniel Parker of Inspector Lynley Mysteries has a role. I'm glad I did.

This is a well done film with Michael Caine and the not so young Demi Moore. Regardless of their ages, the depth of the characters puts together a timid plot to make an enjoyable film, with a feel good film/ story. Okay for a night to replace boredom with small laughing outbursts on the quirkiness of subtle underlying jokes. It is a slow movie to begin, and is so through out the rest of it, but it does it in such a way to continue the growing curiosity and find out the sum of the show from the small twists and plays of the storyline. It is mostly the lovable character (Caine) that keeps the viewer involved so deeply in the story, also his lost but not forgotten past. It leads to a cliché ending but still very acceptable in my view. And the actor whom plays Mr.Finch also plays the Merovingian from The Matrix. A small plus to see his acting career develop and hopefully become more mainstream.

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.

Flawless is a charming, tense, and nicely executed caper movie.

I had absolutely no idea how the robbery was done until the revelation: and, like most of us, I have watched enough heist movies to quickly go "Yup, got it!", more often than not, but not here.

Excellent understated performances from Demi Moore and Michael Caine, especially in the small facial gestures when stressed and so on. The settings etc; all add to a nice retro feel. You really get a sense that they tried hard to build the 1960s into this - very buttoned-down, very regimented, a very male world.

One of the major attractions for us was that the sense of pace builds slowly - and compared to the Bank Job I have to say this is the better movie.

All in all a clever, entertaining film, with a good script and very nice central performances, and even a human message.

Definitely recommended

I recall some woefully erroneous movie critic writing about Michael Caine in the late 1960s that Caine was the sort of actor whose career would have three brief stages: 1. Get me Michael Caine; 2. Get me a Michael Caine type; 3. Who is Michael Caine? Needless to say, that movie critic is now long gone and forgotten, while Michael Caine has simply gotten better and better, aging like fine wine. This is not a big "message" movie, or a huge budget extravaganza, but rather it is an extremely well-made and entertaining and suspenseful crime film with very human characters you can really care about. It is set in 1960 England, in which Caine, a janitor, attempts a spectacular robbery of precious jewels. With the able support of Demi Moore, in one of her best performances, and the fine direction of Michael Radford, and a wonderful attention to the little details that make a film so much better, FLAWLESS is very much worth the price of admission. And Mr. Caine, with his finely nuanced performance, a man who can make a glance or a subtle movement speak more than a ton of histrionics by lesser actors, is topping the bill. Need I say more?