Movie Review: Flawless (2007)

High-heeled shoes and cigarettes are the stars of the diamond heist snoozer Flawless. Cigarette’s performance is smokin’ but it couldn’t save the movie from its ridiculously illogical and uneven script or from the likes of the other performances. Flawless? — there couldn’t be a worse name for this movie.

London Diamond Company owns the diamond trade all over the world. Rotund, greedy diamond executives keep the entire supply of diamonds in the vault in the basement. Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), assisted by her sidekicks Cigarette (Marlboro Light) and High-heel (Jimmy Choo), is a negotiation manager who gets passed over numerous times for a better job. After the last time she got passed up, Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine), the night janitor, offers her the opportunity to stick it to the man by stealing a thermos full of diamonds. What Laura Quinn doesn’t know will hurt her.

To call the writing in Flawless atrocious would be like calling Bill Gates a man of comfortable wealth. The character Laura Quinn is the stupidest smart woman in the history of cinema. Smart enough to see hidden negotiating tactics waiting to be deployed but such a simpleton she couldn’t see the writing on the wall. I think I actually got a new wrinkle from crinkling my eyebrows at her bizarre behavior.

The heist itself reminded me of an old duck caring for kittens while making sausage in a toilet on a space station; utterly nonsensical. In fairness, all diamond-casino-bank heist movies try to implement the ridiculous to make the story exciting by asking us to think outside the box (i.e., Ocean’s Thirteen). Flawless doesn’t ask us to think outside the box, it just lights the box on fire with the audience inside, cruelly leaving us to burn in fiery cinematic damnation. Writer Edward Anderson deserves to eat duck-kitten-toilet-space-sausage for what he has done to my sensibilities.

Demi Moore performed like a crying two year old having a tantrum because she wants a cookie. Her crocodile tears were cause for unrestrained laughter. She was one step from putting the back of her hand on her forehead and sighing as she collapses on her fainting couch. I spent a great deal of the “film” wondering if she had ever acted before and then remembering that she is Demi Moore and she had no excuse for such an amateur quality performance.

Michael Caine isn’t nearly as terrible. I believe he does his best to give the character warmth and sincerity. I believe his worst decision was agreeing to portray any character in Flawless, but more specifically Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Hobbs strives to be a character of depth and complexity but is just a minnow in a wading pool. He only seems deep until you realize a minnow is tiny.

I don’t know if director Michael Radford and cinematographer Richard Greatrex are extremely fond of cigarettes and women walking away in high heels but I suspect they are. Nearly half of the movie takes place while a cigarette is being smoked or lit. Thirty percent is dedicated to Demi Moore’s rump walking away, always starting from her shoes and working up to a wide shot showing her figure. It is no surprise the movie Hoovers a bowling ball, only twenty percent is dedicated to plot or character development.

Given the choice between watching this movie again or have sandpaper repeatedly drug through my anal cavity, I’d gladly bend over. Please save yourself — don’t see Flawless. The world seems much gloomier now that I have.