Flawless
released 2007
www.ink2quill.com

“Flawless” is a history, diamond heist, crime and social awareness movie produced by Natalia Malkin, Vitaly Malkin, Stephen Margolis, Michael A. Pierce, Mark Williams and Lisa Wilson. Now today at year’s end of 2022 we still don’t have a name for the category of film that deals with disturbing social issues, so let’s call it the category social awareness. It was written by Edward Anderson and directed by Michael Radford. It stars Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson, Nathaniel Parker, Shaughan Seymor, NIcholas Jones, David Barrass, Joss Ackland, Silas Carson, Derren Nesbitt, Rosalind March, Kevan Willis, Stanley Townsend, Jonathan Aris, Ben Righton, Constantine Gregory, Simon Paisley Day, David Henry, Natalie Dormer and many more.

“Flawless” is a period piece that focuses on a very specific and serious theme that we are still dealing with today in this day and age. The main character is a jewelry executive Laura, played by Demi Moore. Laura is a hard working, capable, driven jewelry company manager/ executive who faces a very disturbing reality on a daily basis. Her reality is the reality women, dark skinned people, handicapped, little people and so many other categories of people faced and still do today. At work she is constantly being marginalized, mocked, held down at her company because she is a woman. She does everything right but she is denied acceptance over and over again. She is even due to be scapegoated. Now, discrimination and harassment in the work place still exists today but back then it was far worse. It was culturally accepted to behave so badly so the people in power indulged. Think of the hugely successful series “Mad Men”. They make no qualms about showing society as it was in mid century America. Well, this film succeeds just as well, if not better because they are able to convey the feeling of extreme isolation Laura faces. Laura’s life changes drastically when Hobbs, played by Michael Caine, comes into her life and reveals some disturbing news about her future in the company.

The character of Laura was ambitious and hard working. Like probably most of her male counter parts she had a non-existing social life. Her apartment had nice things, nice furniture but did not feel lived in by anyone or even herself. She is somebody who gave up way too much for a job that was incredibly toxic and we, the viewer, pity her for that.

So many movies have dealt with this topic but none have done it so well as “Flawless”. It is not an easy thing to bring a person’s experiences within a group to light in the visual medium, whether it’s videos, movies or TV. It can easily come off as contrived and that is a shame. This film bravely goes there and succeeds.

This film might well be Demi Moore’s best work. She really embodies and conveys the seriousness of her situation. The way we saw Laura go through the horrible stress of her situation was brilliant acting. I kept asking myself if anyone was going to stand up and do the right thing. But like in so many of those cases nobody did. Everyone went along with crowd.

This is a very good diamond heist film that focused primarily on the development of Laura and that is what made it such a good film. I think that this film will age very nicely and will be enjoyed by audiences for years to come.

Go and check out “Flawless” it’s great cinema.

John Ink2Quill

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