Le casse du siècle

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.

"Flawless" is a very unusual heist film. While this is generally a wonderful genre with MANY great caper pictures (such as "Rififi", "Oceans Eleven", "Grand Slam" and "Bob le Flambeur"), it's also a genre that seems to have little in the way of twists to make newer heist films worth seeing. With "Flawless" they managed to come up with a dandy twist...making it yet another lovely heist film worth your time.

When the story begins, Laura (Demi Moore) is an elderly woman in the present day being interviewed by a reporter about her extraordinary career. It seems that back in the 1950s, Laura was a real groundbreaker...an executive in the diamond industry in London when other women only became secretaries. But the interview goes in a way the reporter didn't suspect when Laura admits that long, long ago she was involved in a huge diamond robbery...one for which she managed never to be caught. Now, with the statute of limitations behind her, she's about to tell her story.

It seems that in the 1950s, Laura is a very talented and capable executive with London Di, a huge diamond firm. But again and again and again, men are being advanced to upper management and she has come to realize she has hit the so-called 'glass ceiling' and because she was a woman, she'd never go any further. This is rough....but imagine how frustrated she becomes when the company janitor, Hobbs (Michael Caine), tells her that he read a letter in the CEO's office...and it said that they were going to fire her and blackball her in the industry!

Why would Hobbs tell Laura this? Well, after showing her a copy of the letter, he lets her in on his plan...to rob the vault of many millions of pounds worth of gems. And, with her being angry and hurt, she reluctantly agreed to help. What's next? See the film.

There were some very good performances in this movie. Joss Acklund is wonderful as the soulless CEO....a vicious and imposing figure that few other living actors would be able to play well. Moore is also very good....and gave a much better performance than usual because she was given excellent material. And, well, Michael Caine is Michael Caine! Fine acting all around in this one.

So is the film worth seeing? Absolutely. But I must warn you....folks with short attention spans, teenagers and children or folks who need explosions and boobs instead of plot might not enjoy this picture. But I thought it was terrific...and I do like how it managed to make you feel no sorry for the victims (after all, the whole blood diamond angle is alluded to in the film) and breathe new life into the genre. My only quibble, and it's a minor one, is that Moore's character seems a bit wishy-washy about the robbery late in the movie...something I would have preferred hadn't been in the story.

I cannot, however, for the life of me understand why the film only has a paltry 6.8 average currently on IMDB...it's much better than that.

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?

"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.