Flawless **** (1999, Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Miller) – Classic Movie Review 2020

Writer-director Joel Schumacher’s rather weird and wonderful 1999 comedy drama hits the spot, a success in large part to do with its two star performances.

Though both cast to type – just imagine if they’d swapped roles! – Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman are marvellous as a homophobic, ultra-conservative police officer and the free-spirited drag queen neighbour in in his apartment building.

De Niro plays Walt Koontz, who has a stroke and ends up paralysed on his right side, with his speech impaired and barely able to walk. His doctor encourages him to try singing lessons to overcome his speech difficulties. He is so desperate that he eventually caves in to the help of his flamboyant pre-op transgender neighbour Rusty Zimmerman, who gives him the therapy of singing lessons.

Prejudice ends and peace is across the landscape as a highly unlikely bond is formed between the odd couple. Flawless isn’t subtle but its heart is as big as the Empire State Building, and that, with some amusing and touching dialogue and the two stars’ surprisingly subtle and nuanced performances, is enough. Maybe more than enough. As a mainstream dialogue-led character study and spirit-lifter and awareness-raiser, this is a very good thing that Schumacher has done here.

By the way, both of the characters are not ‘equally prejudiced’. It’s not prejudiced to be opposed to prejudice and personal hatred.

At the end of the year he died, remembering Philip Seymour Hoffman. RIP.

Tragically, Philip Seymour Hoffman died on February 2 2014, aged 46, from an apparent drug overdose in his New York City apartment. Awarded a Best Actor Oscar for the 2005 film Capote, he checked into rehab in May 2013 for heroin use.

Born in Fairport, New York, in 1967, Hoffman began his career in the early 1990s with a guest role in TV’s Law & Order, but broke through to the movies in 1992 in four films, including Scent of a Woman.

He acted in The Getaway and Nobody’s Fool, and five films for Paul Thomas Anderson, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and The Master, as well as earning acclaim for his performances in Happiness, Flawless, The Talented Mr Ripley, Red Dragon, Almost Famous and Capote. He was currently filming The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 2020

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