'Flawless' isn't perfect, but Caine saves it

A janitor and an executive set out to rob the London Diamond Company.

Will they get away with it?

As crime heist films go, "Flawless" is one of the more quiet and nonaggressive. Its pace is more deliberate than flashy, and even its general premise is low-keyed.

The plan is a simple one: Steal the combination to the vault, avoid the security cameras and walk out with a thermos jug of diamonds that the janitor can easily get out of the building when he checks out. The theory is that the fat-cat executives who run the crooked place will never even miss this paltry patch of diamonds.

Demi Moore has her largest role in 10 years, if you don't count the silly cameo as a villainess in "Charlie's Angels." She plays the company's lone female executive, as smart as any of the boys but constantly overlooked for promotions. This makes her a likely candidate when the janitor looks for an accomplice.

She looks mature, and perhaps not enough femme nor fatale to be the typical femme fatale. She walks through the role, but she wears great clothes as she does it.

Too much time is wasted in establishing her character's motivation for getting into the robbery. Her British accent also is a distraction - particularly since the woman is American but studied at Oxford. She could have gotten away without trying it.

The director is Michael Radford, who directed one of the great surprise Oscar nominees with "Il Postino" (1994) as well as the most recent film version of "The Merchant of Venice" (2004). He's arty.

The film is saved, as so many films have been, by Michael Caine. As the seemingly tired and uneducated janitor, he solicits Moore to help him. Because the robbery comes fairly early in the film, we imagine it will be a success, but we know something is going to go wrong. It always does in these movies.

This one holds our interest but never really holds us in suspense. Its "Flawless" title refers to the quality of the diamonds, not the plot. It is all substance and little flash, just the opposite of "The Bank Job," which was a surprise flop earlier this season.

Even the usually flamboyant Caine is restrained. Moore, by the way, got her big movie break when she played his daughter in 1984's "Blame It on Rio."

Joss Ackland, the character actor who is always up to no good, is ultra-powerful and evil here. Company dealings with Russia and South Africa are thrown in as possible reasons for the robbery. Ultimately, the motive for the crime becomes more the center of things than the robbery itself.

There are a few surprise twists, but this heist is a slow go.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com