No Caine Do!

FLAWLESS
Running Time 105 minutes
Written by Edward Anderson
Directed by Michael Radford
Starring Michael Caine, Demi Moore

Flawless is another contrived heist flick, with Michael Caine living up to his confession in a recent interview that he’s lost so much interest in acting that he only makes movies for money now, and Demi Moore as living proof of the dangers of too much Botox. She’s stalled in her career as the first female manager who ever existed in the British diamond industry and is on the verge of being sacked. He’s the embittered old night janitor who needs retirement money. Together they embark on a highly implausible scheme to relieve the diamond vaults of two tons of jewels worth 100 million pounds, hidden in a coffee thermos. She wants revenge. He wants recompense for the years he’s spent on his hands and knees for slave wages. The details of the heist, in which snafus lurk around each marble hallway, bulge with routine bank robbery hokum. The stroke-producing horror the next day, when the corporation finds the world’s largest supply of priceless gems completely vanished beyond security guards and walls of solid steel, and the tedious investigation that follows do not exactly add up to nail-chewing excitement. While all of this happens, for no reason, in the 1960’s, Ms. Moore returns decades later in a white wig and three miles of latex wrinkles to explain what happened to the money. I must have been asleep, but I swear I thought she said she gave it all to charity. Say huh? A publicist for the film was kind enough to let me see the ending twice, and I still could not explain it at gunpoint.

The two stars don’t have enough charisma to fill a demitasse. Ms. Moore looks hard and lacquered and sculpted out of 40 miles of unpaved road, and Mr. Caine can barely keep his eyes open. We now know that when Mitchum acted with his eyes at half-mast, he was crocked. Mr. Caine is just bored. Did director Michael Radford even bother to introduce them before he yelled “Action”? Flawless is anything but.