Vengeance Is Fleeting, Diamonds Are Forever

Maybe it has something to do with the depreciating dollar, or the fact that, in the age of the 401(k), just about anyone can become a millionaire by the time they retire, but something significant has changed about this year's crop of bank heist blockbusters.

Once upon a time in movies, the robbery stood as an end unto itself, with the questions being whether the thieves would get away with the loot and which crook would double-cross his accomplices. But this year, the genre has taken an unusual turn, and the heist is no longer the end but merely the beginning of a more complicated web of mystery.

Earlier this month, "The Bank Job" was less about the crooks than the "law-abiding" owners of the pilfered safe-deposit boxes; it was a movie in which the victims were more sordid than the criminals. In a similar vein, "Flawless," which makes its big-screen premiere today (but made its small-screen debut a few weeks ago on Mark Cuban's HDNet), is a charming and punchy heist caper that cares a lot less about the riches than it does about the personal, professional, and societal dramas behind the robbery. Unlike so many formulaic heist procedurals that get bogged down in the "how" of it all, Michael Radford's film rushes through the actual stealing to arrive at a third act that is more intrigued by the "why."

Hobbs (Michael Caine), a lowly janitor still mourning the death of his wife and feeling the pinch of shrinking paychecks, is all but invisible during his nightly shift at a major London diamond importer in 1960. Every morning, on his way out of the building, he crosses paths with Laura Quinn (Demi Moore, complete with ridiculous English accent), the only female executive at London Diamonds Corporation. Laura's arriving early to get the jump on her male counterparts, and Hobbs, who picks through the garbage and listens in on the conversations of those same men, knows that she has been repeatedly passed over by her sexist employers. One morning, Hobbs hears Laura's bosses discussing her pending termination, and he decides to share the information with her, gauging whether her desire for revenge might equal his own to fleece his employer.

What's crucial to the success of the film, not to mention that of the janitor's scheme, are the ways in which Laura and Hobbs — a tense female executive trying to "compensate" for her gender by being a workaholic, and a relaxed blue-collar janitor trying to make up for his financial predicaments with a bucket of gems — slowly toy with each other's trust. Mr. Caine, sporting a limp but contradicting that frail façade with an arrogant air, is the perfect foil to the pent-up Ms. Moore, who trusts Hobbs enough early on to allow him full control of the heist. But as the plot goes wrong, in a very public way, her anxiety clashes violently with his confidence, and the co-conspirators quickly become enemies.

Some of the most unnerving and memorable scenes in "Flawless" concern how these two characters try to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the robbery's aftermath. As Laura's superiors start to panic, bringing in an insurance investigator, Finch (Lambert Wilson), to probe the crime and recover the loot, she becomes a ticking bomb of tells and giveaways. Ms. Moore crafts an intriguing arc of self-destruction as this longtime control freak starts to crack. Hobbs, by contrast, is as suave after the heist as he was before, and it is in Mr. Caine's disarming and beguiling performance that the audience is hooked, trying to measure a man who seemed to know the whole time that he'd be a step ahead of everyone.

As the plot thickens and motives are divulged, money becomes a secondary concern, overwhelmed by issues of power and injustice. Through Laura's vengeance we recognize the rampant sexism of the period, not just in the pressures of the workplace but in the way Finch becomes aroused — and maybe distracted — by the prospect of a female culprit. Through Hobbs, we see the income gap of a single office, where the ultra-rich work alongside the ultra-poor, sharing the same space yet existing in different realities. "Flawless" is not a story of the "big score," but one in which a botched robbery shines a light on corrupt businesses and societies. The fact that the whole story plays out in flashback — a possible death knell — only makes it more titillating. We know from the beginning that one of our heroes walked away with the treasure. So the cat is never in the bag, allowing us instead to focus on where the cat came from and who managed to free it.