Caine, Moore play well together in heist tale

"Flawless" delves into a diamond heist, paying equal attention to the reasons for the crime as it does the ways it's carried out.

Set in 1960, the drama concerns Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), who has achieved executive status at the London Diamond Corporation. Laura's given up life and love in her service to the company yet can't seem to get any higher on the corporate ladder, even as less qualified men rise past her.

Along comes affable cockney janitor Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine), who is privy to a lot of insider office info because the suits talk in front of the cleaning staff "like we don't exist." Knowing Laura's silent frustration, Hobbs informs Laura that the diamond giant is about to throw her under the bus to keep quiet a backroom deal that she devised.

Hobbs proposes that they smuggle a Thermos full of diamonds out of the company's vault, not enough to be missed but enough to compensate them for unrecognized service. The wily janitor has all the details worked out and plans to do the job, Laura just needs to lift the vault code from her boss (a crusty Joss Ackland) and pass it along.

These two disgruntled workers are the core of "Flawless," and they help give it some weight over the flashy technique of recent heist pictures. Moore and Caine, last seen together as daughter and father in 1984's "Blame It on Rio," play the uneasy alliance well, although due to the audience's shifting sympathies, both come off a bit chilly in the end.

Laura is conflicted between her allegiance to the company and her sense of personal justice. This heightens in the aftermath of the theft, when she realizes there's more to Hobbs' scheme than she initially believed. In an attempt to regain control of the situation, she volunteers to help a chiseled detective (Lambert Wilson) track down the diamonds but becomes torn among suspicion of Hobbs, attraction to the cop and self-preservation.

Director Michael Radford ("Il Postino") and first-time screenwriter Edward Anderson tell the story from Laura's point of view as she recounts it to a reporter (Natalie Dormer of Showtime's "The Tudors"), decades after the events took place. Thankfully, they're conscientious enough to not show us things Laura couldn't have known, a fatal flaw in many first-person-recollection movies.

Moore handles Laura's turmoil well, her somewhat flat expression betraying discord and doubt behind a professional veneer. At first, she sounds like she's doing a bad English accent, but once her character is revealed as an American educated and working in London, her pseudo-Brit affectations (she says "shedule") are actually quite intuitive.

Caine's the bigger presence, all gregarious charm and earthy genius, but he's also not putting everything on the surface. This detachment, despite good performances from both leads and an admirably tense heist sequence, contributes to the film's slightly alienating sensation of distance.

The filmmakers lace the film with political references, ranging from corporate glass ceilings and the anti-Red movement to morally dubious diamond trading practices. Whether or not people were actually protesting "blood diamonds" on the streets of London in 1960, communism is just a red herring here. Laura's unique route around institutional sexism should feel more triumphant, but we don't really get to know her well enough to cheer too loudly.

p class="factboxheadblack">"Flawless"

21/2 stars

Starring: Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson, Joss Ackland

Directed by: Michael Radford

Other: A Magnolia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (brief strong language). 105 minutes.