Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a quick review of a movie you probably haven't heard of before. In my recent undercover infiltration of the American Film Market I read about this flick called FLAWLESS. I was immediately pulled in by the premise and cast. Michael Caine stars in this heist movie set in 1960 London.
What a great idea, I thought. Outside of the OCEAN'S movies we are sorely missing those great heist movies of the '60s and '70s. Michael Caine himself starred in many great ones, including the underseen, but fucking great GAMBIT with Shirley MacClaine. What a great throwback.
I know this sounds like I'm setting it up to trash it, but I did enjoy the movie quite a bit. There are certain aspects I wish I had seen in this movie and it fell below the possibilities of the idea, but on the whole it's an entertaining film that doesn't feel like anything else out in theaters these days.
One of my main disappointments came with the lead character not being Michael Caine. Thank God he's in the movie for more than just a cameo... he has a big character and an important one, at that, but he's not the lead. Instead, you have Demi Moore playing one of the only females working in the executive offices of the world's largest diamond retailer. An American living in London... but strangely enough she has a British accent which drops in and out... Although, I have to give them credit because they did try to explain her dodgy accent by talking about how she's been living in England since she was a girl, so having a sort of half-British half-American accent thing works.
Of course, being a businesswoman in the '60s she's routinely passed over for promotions, coming up with great ideas that she never gets the credit for, etc. In other words, she'd be easy to convince to steal a ton of raw diamonds by the man with the plan. This man is, of course, Michael Caine, a janitor who has been working in this building for decades and is about to retire with little more than a small pension and a clap on the back.
I won't say much more as it'd be criminal of me to give away the step by step of a good heist film, even if the film is a bit flawed (despite what the title says).
The key element that is missing from this movie, the one thing I missed more than any other, the one thing that you can find in the best of the best of the classics, be it THE ITALIAN JOB, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY or THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR... and that's fun. Just plain old fun.
The heist in FLAWLESS is smart, the tension is great, the odds stacked up against our would-be robbers, but there's an element of fun that missing from most of the movie. You can see it pop up during the the actual job, but for the rest of the movie there's no sense of fun at all. It's entertaining, of course, and written well and acted well... just lacking that fun.
It's good to see Caine playing such an average joe role in this kind of picture again. He brings as much warmth and intelligence as you'd expect from him. Moore does fine, she's just not as interesting to me as Caine and his character are. Although, she does have a really good relationship with Lambert Wilson who plays an insurance investigator she's assigned to help solve the heist she herself was involved in. Some good, subtle work between the two.
As of now, this film doesn't have US distribution, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it picked up by someone like Yari Group or some place similar for a small theatrical run. I really hope this doesn't end direct to DVD. It deserves to be seen on the big screen even if it's not a perfect movie.
Got more reviews in the pipe-line, squirts! Be back soon!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
quint@aintitcool.com
