***Out In The 1960s Night- Michael Caine and Demi Moore’s Flawless

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Flawless, starring Demi Moore, Michael Caine, 2008

No question, no question at all that it was tough, tough as hell, to be a woman with executive level skills, CEO-type skills in the international diamond business then based in London, or any business for that matter, in the 1960s. But what were you, that woman, to do about it, except endlessly smoke cigarettes and fume. No question, no question at all that the private health insurance racket for serious illnesses in England, or anywhere for that matter, is predicated on providing the least possible help for the sick when all is said and done. Those two hurts, the first held by Demi Moore, the other by Michael Caine (in about his twelve millionth film) around the treatment of his dead wife is what drives the plotline in this film under review, Flawless(as in flawless diamonds or flawless plan, I assume).

Naturally, naturally for a suspense thriller these hurts can only be resolved by action, here by criminal action. See Michael, a janitor at the London Diamond Exchange, recruits Demi, a middle-level executive there to a plan that he has cooked up to get revenge for his wife’s death on the insurance executive whose policy didn’t provide the expected coverage when she developed cancer. And as part of the package help Demi get even for being passed over when promotion time came up and some lesser guy, lesser male got pushed ahead in that old rat race.

The plan: steal a few million dollars in diamonds from the vast haul in the vault as restitution. Hell, their disappearance would never be noticed. He says. And the damn plan worked, worked real well. Except in the end though Michael had a bigger political objective, to ruin that insurance company so he ingeniously stole the contents of the whole vault and held it ransom. And the ransom after much hemming and hawing was paid. Nice work. Except that was not Michael’s point in this caper and so Demi wound up with the 100 million dollar ransom which she spent the rest of her life trying to give away to various charities. Yah, I know, far-fetched but what isn’t far-fetched is that for once crime did pay, did pay for the side of the angels for a change.