Flawless
Magnolia Pictures, 100mins, PG-13


Directed by
Michael Radford

Once upon a time, when ugly white men ruled the world, there was an evil monopoly called De Beers. Based in South Africa and London, this company controlled the diamond trade and overcharging the world for the sparklies by billions of dollars.

Screenwriter Edward A. Anderson and director Michael Radford cannot call De Beers De Beers, of course, so they call it the London Diamond coroporation, and robbing it is as feel-good a subject for a caper flick as anything else, I guess,

But in the latter days of the '00ze, you have to have more than an evil entity to rob, you have to have some redeeming social importance [okay, you don't, but it's nice], so they've put the action in 1960 and  focus on the first woman to climb up the corporate ladder there, one Laura Quinn(Demi Moore), who because of her gender is working twice as hard as the men but getting the shaft reguardless.

She saves the company from Russia's threat to destroy the monopoly, and is rewarded, as she learns from an old janitor named
Hobbs(Michael Caine), by being fired and blacklisted. LDC president Sir Milton Ashtoncroft(Joss Ackland) is such a nice guy. After telling her about her fate, Hobbs tells her of a little project of his, robbing the vault of just enough diamonds so that he and she can live happily ever after, albeit not together.
 

So the much of the rest of the film is an actually pretty good caper movie, made even more interesting by the amount of diamonds stolen. Then, of course, the insurance company [insurance companies are evil too] sends crack investigator Finch (Lambert Wilson) and the suspense grows, as it should.

Demi Moore hasn't been in a film for quite a while and she and everyone else give it the old college try. Definitely worth a bargain matinee