Word: flawless
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Skilled performances and atmospheric cinematography fail to save Joel Schumacher's Flawless, a predictable array of overwrought clichs and meddling sideplots...
...Seymour Hoffman knows how to make you wince. Remember his Scotty, the hapless gofer who desperately lunged to kiss porn star Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights? Or his wrenching portrayal of Allen, the obscene phone caller in Todd Solondz's Happiness? Now Joel Schumacher's Flawless brings us Rusty, a transsexual who befriends a homophobic stroke victim played by Robert De Niro. It's a typically gutsy performance that tightropes between drag-queen camp and the pathos of a man who believes he's the butt of a biological practical joke...
...embodying these down-and-outers with a skill and conviction that are swiftly making him Hollywood's most unlikely leading man since that other Hoffman, Dustin, stammered through The Graduate the year Philip was born. By year's end the 32-year-old actor will appear not only in Flawless, but also in two of this Oscar season's most anticipated offerings: as a compassionate nurse in Anderson's Magnolia and as an expatriate blueblood in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley...
Love--or at least affectionate understanding--conquers all, even (perhaps especially) initial loathing. It's the oldest message of the movies. Flawless carries that lie to new heights of predictability...
...romantic and buddy relationships. All this points to the preordained ending, in which everyone learns to get along with everyone else. De Niro's is a carefully studied performance, which pretty much concedes the screen to Hoffman's showy mix of transgression and tenderness. He's fine, but Flawless is a cause lost to feel-good cliches...