Flawless
Demi Moore plays Laura Quinn, a determined, early-40’s manager at a major diamond brokerage conglomerate at the dawn of 60’s London. A woman forced to live beneath a glass ceiling before the term was coined, Laura still operates with a cool, composed manner hiding a fierce intelligence and determination to succeed in an entirely male-dominated profession. After being passed over yet again for a promotion to one of her clearly lesser associates, Laura is despondent despite her bold, tightly-laced exterior. Her counterpart in the proceedings appears in the form of Mr. Hobbs, played by Michael Caine; a lowly, affable night janitor who despite his pleasant demeanor also hides cleverness and stealth as he rifles through executives’ correspondence at night and eavesdrops conversations with ease simply because he is deemed less than important to keep such conversations secret.
Hobbs learns that Laura’s position at the firm is about to be terminated due to preserving secrecy around an idea she initially conceived. Facing unemployment and an uncertain future, Laura is coerced by Hobbs into committing a robbery of the brokerage’s vast diamond reserves sealed in its underground vault. After some cloak and dagger work and minor complications, the robbery commences yet here is where the film takes its first major turn with a surprise swerve on both the audience and characters. Soon enough, a veteran insurance investigator named Finch (Lambert Wilson) is requested to investigate and what should have been a simple robbery quickly unfolds into a mystery with possible political implications.
In terms of plot development, the film eschews the rather comfortable yet pat rhythms of a conventional heist film about halfway through in exchange for an increasingly tangled mess of not who done it, but how and why. Laura is left to contend with why the heist goes wrong and Hobbs’ frustratingly mysterious motivations which only reveal themselves at a point where caring becomes irrelevant. Once the twists are finally explained, the tension with which the film’s first half anchored itself by is long gone and now you simply want to grasp what the hell happened so it does not bug the mind after leaving the theater.
Flawless’ saving grace though does lie in its performances though; Moore and Caine do make a rather odd but compatible couple as the mix of Caine’s natural ease as a performer in this career stage plays off of Moore who essentially is repeating a role type she has done before only this time with a little more age and far more elegant costuming. Think of Laura Quinn as Disclosure’s Meredith Johnson without the weapons of sexuality and sexual harassment at her disposal to gain what she wants professionally. The real hidden pleasure though within the story is Lambert’s character.
Known to most American filmgoers as the Merovingian in the later half of the Matrix trilogy (arguably the only worthwhile addition to the last two films), Wilson is an actor of considerable talent and skill with a role allowing him to stretch out with ease. Finch recognizes Laura’s complicity early on yet also identifies with her loneliness as he himself is an outsider in the world he inhabits. Without families, absorbed by work, Finch and Laura make an intriguing couple as each understands the other implicitly and thus the motivations to commit such a crime.
In the end though, the plot resolves itself with yet another twist as we learn of Laura’s fate some forty years later while speaking to a young magazine editor (The Tudors’ delicious Natalie Dormer). Dormer’s character arguably is the end product of what women like Laura worked so hard to achieve in their lifetimes and careers. Flawless would work better perhaps if either this aspect or the political implications of diamond mining and exploitation a la Blood Diamond were more firmly interwoven. As it stands though, the film is an enjoyable yarn with actors who won’t let you down and approached this project probably with great ease.