Flawless: Critic Reviews

It's left to Caine to wink and nod at his own contribution to real caper classics of the 1960s and '70s, produced with more emphasis on fun and less on instructive fact-finding.

Flawless is a mildly diverting period heist movie in which an odd couple conspire to loot an evil London diamond company, for which they both work.

You will need a very sweet tooth for this kind of thing, and, to be quite frank, the heist itself is not dramatised all that excitingly or clearly. But I quite like thrillers featuring enormous circular vault doors.

Flawless makes an entertainingly nostalgic journey to old Britain -- that black-and-white world we remember from long-ago Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean movies.

Flawless is a gimcrack, a genre exercise, yet it's a confidence game in the best sense of the phrase. [Director] Radford knows the rules - when to bend them, when to break them, and when to play by them. That's an increasingly rare skill.

There is a nice sense of style, and appreciation for tense face-to-face confrontations among characters trying to ignore the temptations around them. It's sort of the opposite of the current robbery flick The Bank Job - all substance and no flash.

Flawless, directed with a fine eye by Michael Radford, is a diamond-heist thriller that will make you nostalgic for the smart, classy caper films of a certain era.

For all its stodginess, however, Flawless is a reasonably good time, for one reason. The reason's name is Maurice Micklewhite, better known as Michael Caine.

Screenwriter Edward Anderson drops the South African angle in favor of more conventional developments and has a hard time bringing this across the finish line without a number of implausibilities.

For about 100 of its 108 minutes, this film treats the viewer to a stylish, suspenseful roller coaster peppered with all manner of ugly, money-grubbing corporate types.

A nicely made if slightly stodgy jewel heist flick that offers Michael Caine one more juicy, low-key role and Demi Moore another step back up the ladder to career revival.

Flawless is anything but.

Period detail is lovingly rendered (it's a nice touch to have people smoking in the cinema), while the technology is wonderfully '60s.

The plot contortions that very slowly unfold under Michael Radford's arthritic direction in Flawless are not much...entertaining.

It's good disposable entertainment that offers the right mix of character identification, plot unpredictability, and suspense to keep viewers interested throughout.

A mopey character study only half-convincingly tricked out as a heist thriller.

Diamonds aren't forever in this sluggish heist caper from Michael Radford that partners Michael Caine and Demi Moore for the first time since 1984's Blame It On Rio.

Yet for all the imperfections, Flawless is a film you find yourself rooting for. Heists involving a keen sense of history are pleasant to stumble across.

Calling a diamond-heist movie Flawless is a valiant choice - especially when it's anything but. Suspense is essential to this genre, but here you couldn't care less what happens next.

Demi Moore will do as the ghost of Hollywood past, rattling her jewelled accessories like a drag-queen Jacob Marley.

Ignore the dull framing device and this is a watchable period crime drama. Pity about the dull, oft-used title though.

Terrific performances elevate this extremely low-key heist thriller into something thoroughly intriguing. It may never crank up much excitement, but the 1960s vibe it generates is very cool.

There's little by way of thrills. Still, as a caper with a great cast and clever premise, Flawless works, despite its, um, flaws.

"Hang on lads, I've got a great idea..." said Michael Caine at the end of The Italian Job. Presumably he didn't mean waiting 40 years before pulling off a caper that wouldn't blow the bloody doors off a rabbit hutch.