Flawless, He Said

Starring Demi Moore as the career impaired American in the multinational behemoth London Diamond Corporation and the always interesting Michael Caine, as the unseen Janitor. this highly unlikely pair manages to bring the powerful and greedy men who run this monopoly to it's knees. Both, for their own reasons, has a need to strike back at the puppeteer who pulls their strings, and strike they do

Caine's character Hobbs is another in the long string of charming rascals that he does so effortlessly. Hobbs is just one of the janitors in the sparkling clean and sterile offices of the Corporation. At one point the career obsessed Laura Quinn asks him how he has access to so much information about her and the inner workings of the company. He tells her that people discuss things in front of him as if he wasn't even there. Than given the access to all of the office waste and the information that contains, Hobbs has a unique perspective on this super-secretive organization. Hobbs convinces Laura that he only wants to steal a small amount of diamonds to secure his retirement. He recruits her because he knows that not only has she been passed over for advancement six times, but that she is going to be fired. Once she verifies that he is correct, she steals the secret combination to the main vault.

Laura is a reluctant participant in the crime and at every turn becomes Hobb's accomplice and worst problem as she vacillates from wanting to succeed and fear of failure. when the film opens and older Laura Quinn is giving an interview to a clueless young reporter who is writing a puff piece on the women who forged the path for women in the all boys club atmosphere of the business world in the nineteen sixties. Laura wipes the smugness off the young woman's face when she pops a legendary diamond out of her purse and implies that the gem was the cause of her imprisonment until the very day they were meeting.

When we get pulled back to London in the sixties, we see young Laura as an ex-patriot American trying to work her way up in the corporation. Quickly we learn that her intelligence and are both a asset and threat to the men who run the company. We can see even if Laura won't admit it that she is going no where in this firm for one reason and one reason alone, she is a women in a mans world. Her manipulation by Hobbs is almost as ruthless as the neglectful corporation, for it soon becomes apparent that Hobbs has and agenda that is wider than enhancing his self-styled retirement fund.
This film is a fun romp of a "how'ed he do it" and look at the way things were and continue to be for women in the man's world. I know the Demi Moore is the actress that critic's love to hate, but this role is one she handles as easily as "G. I Jane", where she ventures into this war of the sexes. Caine as alternatively the resourceful thief and father figure compliments her completely. The script is tight and the ending completely a surprise.