(For SI blog Reader Naveen)

Sometimes to make something right you have to do something just as wrong.
– One of the heist conspirators in Flawless

A short while ago, we watched the Michael Caine, Demi Moore starring Flawless (2007) on Netflix Instant Play.

We didn’t set our hopes too high considering the not so flattering comment from Naveen and so we weren’t too disappointed at the end.

While Naveen watched it primarily for Michael Caine, we were intrigued by both Caine and Demi Moore.

Caine because he, like another Britisher Anthony Hopkins whom we love, is an excellent actor who can rise to the occasion in any role; As for Demi Moore, it was the perennial hope that she would show enough skin to stir our loins and let us drool all over her assets.

While we were not disappointed in the former, the latter let us down by merely providing a momentary glimpse of her thighs. Not enough, says SI. Our appetite remains unquenched. Kinda like going to Tirupati and returning without going up the hill to see Balaji. 😉

Set in 1960, Flawless, as many of you impatient souls with restless fingers furiously scrolling through the Wiki profile of the film may already know by now, is about the planning of a small heist at the London Diamond Corporation and its implementation.

And the forces behind the proposed heist make an unlikely pair – an old janitor nearing retirement and a young woman executive often passed over for promotion because of the glass ceiling. Hey, remember this was the 1960s when women were still secretaries and telephone operators.

The two conspirators have different motives, or at least one of them explicitly professes a motive.

Since this is a suspense movie, we’ll try not to provide too many details. All we’ll say is that one of the conspirators plays an active role and the other sort of takes a passive position but goes along with the plot.

There are a bunch of twists, only one of which was surprising. And the big thing, of, course, is how the heist is actually done.

We know that it’s been done but just not the exact mechanics of such an impossible feat is accomplished. That had us stumped for a bit.

But the movie itself did not hold our attention completely because the story is shoddy and hopelessly implausible, even by a movie’s suspension-of-disbelief requirements.

For instance, to assume that insurance investigators are so stupid that they can’t figure out what happened simply beggars belief.

Michael Caine is, of course, a delight to watch, as always.

He doesn’t disappoint and in our not-so-humble view his best scenes in the movie are in the tunnel in the second half. The lighting was good, the lines were nice, the acting superb and his cadence just right.

Demi Moore? What about her? Oh, you want to know about her performance.

Hey schmuck, who goes to see Demi Moore for her acting. Truth be said, she didn’t seem to put her heart and soul into the role and obviously didn’t seem too convincing.

We were very impressed with the French actor Lambert Wilson, who plays Finch, the insurance investigator. By the way, Wilson is one of the main characters in Of Gods and Men, the award-winning French movie that’s got everyone talking about it lately.

Its flaws aside, we’d still say Flawless is a watchable film for Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson and the little bit of suspense.

  Michael Caine