MOVIE REVIEW

"Flawless"

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Grade: C

Starring Demi Moore and Michael Caine. Directed by Michael Radford. Rated PG-13 (language, some violent content, brief sexuality and drug use). At metro theaters. 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Bottom line: Demi Moore burdens what should be a fancy-footed jewel caper.

What is Demi Moore so mad about?

I can't figure it out. She's a famous movie star with a relatively new young husband, reasonably good relations with her rich last husband, and a few healthy kids. She has lovely homes and many millions of dollars. Women half her age would kill (or pay) to have her figure.

And she stalks through every role with a storm cloud hanging over her head.

Admitted, her character in "Flawless" is right to be a little glum. It's 1960, and she's gone as far in the diamond business as the old-boy network will let her. When someone approaches her with a scheme to rob her bosses blind, she's definitely interested. After all, they've been stealing from her for years.

Still, this is supposed to be a caper movie. Shouldn't it have a heroine who looks as if she could, you know, conceivably, caper?

There's no chance of that with Moore, who is so determined to hang on to her odd trans-Atlantic accent —- according to the London-set film, she's an Oxford-educated American —- that she barely dares to move her mouth. Head down, face set, she grimly goes through the carefully rehearsed motions.

Which is not exactly the right mood for a relatively light movie about jewel thieves.

Veteran director Michael Radford has a few things going for him. One is a pre-Fab Four setting that allows him to fill the background with lots of fussy men in bowler hats and spice the soundtrack with Dave Brubeck jazz. The other is old pro Michael Caine, who plays the building janitor who comes up with the idea for the heist.

Caine probably did half a dozen films like this during his youth —- one of the best, the modernist-before-its-time "Gambit," actually played out its robbery twice, once as perfect daydream, then as awkward reality. And Caine brings his own slightly seedy Cockney charm to his part as the taken-for-granted employee, the worm who finally turns.

The movie references the great old British thriller "The League of Gentlemen" and owes much to "The Lavender Hill Mob," the one about the meek bank clerk who finally decides to grab some of that gold he's been watching over. But it doesn't have their lightness, and Moore's sour delivery drags down even some of Caine's scenes.

There's a diverting picture in here somewhere, a good puzzle (how would you get hundreds of pounds of uncut gems out of a building, unseen?) and at least one witty performance. But its heroine substitutes doggedness for charm, determination for charisma. And in the end, we're left not with Moore, but less.