Review of Flawless (2007) by Alex M — 27 Feb 2004

[size=3]There are times in Joel Schumacher's atrocious comic-drama [i]Flawless [/i]in which the two principal actors, Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman, are allowed to just be. De Niro and Hoffman are two of our finest actors, and they can make a simple scene involving singing lessons dynamic simply by being so alert and intent on listening to one another. Yet Joel Schumacher, whose career has ranged from tacky action films to schlocky dramas, has no sense of how to construct a story that takes advantage of his actors' abilities. [i]Flawless [/i]is a cliche-riddled mess that does not have one character who isn't a stereotype...only through the sheer talent of Hoffman and De Niro are the two principal characters made loveable enough to briefly maintain our interest. The story is about a gruff, homophobic police officer (De Niro) whose neighbour is a flamboyant drag queen (Hoffman). Since we know [i]Flawless [/i]is going to be a movie about the two people forming a friendship and learning that they are not so different after all, we are anxious to get to the scenes in which the two actors are together. Instead, Schumacher insists on an elaborate set-up as an excuse to put the two together: De Niro suffers a stroke while trying to foil a robbery, and to regain his speech he must take singing lessons from Hoffman. As annoying as the contrived set-up is, [i]Flawless [/i]does hold our interest in the scenes where the two polarized characters learn to love one another...predictable as they may be, De Niro and particularly Hoffman are so touching we are willing to forgive the fact that we know how the relationship will turn out. But Schumacher is not content to have just a drama about two disparate characters, and so he throws in a subplot involving money that is missing in the apartment building...a subplot that ruins the film's flow and adds a rather nasty and violent tone to its conclusion. Other scenes that are appalling are ones involving Hoffman's drag queen friends...who form a greek chorus that practically embodies every homophobe's image of gay men. [i]Flawless [/i]is offensive on multiple levels: it is unnecessarily violent, stereotypes a variety of groups (not just gays, but police officers, Brooklynites and Latin-Americans), and perhaps worst of all: it utterly wastes a good turn from De Niro and a fantastic performance by Hoffman.[/size].

[size=3](BASIC) [/size].