Review: Flawless with Robert DeNiro and Philip Seymour Hoffman
I’ve learned over the years that any Robert DeNiro movie role will have much in common with other characters he’s portrayed in his distinguished career—not to say he is limited, but in every role, we see the real DeNiro shining through from beneath. He shares that quality with other icons. Think John Wayne or Al Pacino.
So the first time I watched it, I was a bit tentative about the story in Flawless, a 1999 film in which he starred opposite the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. I hadn't seen it for a while, but when I caught the film in a cable rerun last night, I was struck again by that ineffable quality.
DeNiro plays Walt Koontz, a tough-guy retired fireman who works as a security guard and lives in a seedy walk-up apartment across the airshaft from a room that always seems filled with flamingly-gay drag-queens. The film quickly establishes Koontz as physically-oriented (he dances Argentine Tango with a woman he regards as a girlfriend, but pays as a hooker), and more than slightly homophobic.
Thus far, classic DeNiro. Then, in responding to a shooting in the apartment building, Koontz suffers a stroke that paralyzes his right side. This strong, self-sufficient man is reduced in an instant to a dependent cripple. He can’t work, he can’t dance. His speech is slurred to the point of incomprehensibility. He can’t bear to have his friends learn of his disability. Recommended to get singing lessons as an aid to speech therapy, he reluctantly decides to take up an offer for lessons from the gay singer who lives opposite him. DeNiro’s portrayal of the loneliness of stroke-victim Koontz, and his struggle to return to his former ability, is flawless.
And for once, the DeNiro beneath the role is harder to discern. He’s still there, but Koontz is more apparent than DeNiro.
Hoffman, a standout in a secondary role in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, had already had experience holding his own opposite a screen icon—Al Pacino, who starred in that film. (Interestingly, Pacino also danced Argentine Tango on screen in that film.) Hoffman’s performance as Rusty Kimmerman, a pre-surgery transsexual who leads DeNiro’s crippled cop to understand that attitude and character are more important than superficial perfection, is nuanced, understated—flawless.
Thus far, classic DeNiro. Then, in responding to a shooting in the apartment building, Koontz suffers a stroke that paralyzes his right side. This strong, self-sufficient man is reduced in an instant to a dependent cripple. He can’t work, he can’t dance. His speech is slurred to the point of incomprehensibility. He can’t bear to have his friends learn of his disability. Recommended to get singing lessons as an aid to speech therapy, he reluctantly decides to take up an offer for lessons from the gay singer who lives opposite him. DeNiro’s portrayal of the loneliness of stroke-victim Koontz, and his struggle to return to his former ability, is flawless.
And for once, the DeNiro beneath the role is harder to discern. He’s still there, but Koontz is more apparent than DeNiro.
Hoffman, a standout in a secondary role in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, had already had experience holding his own opposite a screen icon—Al Pacino, who starred in that film. (Interestingly, Pacino also danced Argentine Tango on screen in that film.) Hoffman’s performance as Rusty Kimmerman, a pre-surgery transsexual who leads DeNiro’s crippled cop to understand that attitude and character are more important than superficial perfection, is nuanced, understated—flawless.
The two work together, not only to help Koontz recover some of his pre-stroke grace, but also to discover the murderers who shot up the apartment house the night of Koontz’ stroke. Touches of buffoonery and sexual innuendo offset the violence of those killings to provide a flawless balance.
Each time I watch this movie, I see more of value in its story, and in DeNiro’s performance. It’s definitely worth adding Flawless to your movie library.
Liner Notes:
Philip Seymour Hoffman played an another, far more subtle gay character in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Hoffman blackmailer Freddie Miles was a match in petty villainy to the whining schoolboy he played in Scent of a Woman, but each role was clearly a different persona. Contrast that with the gentle, and completely hetero, writer Joseph Turner White in 2000's State and Main, or the all-but-closeted gay writer of Capote.
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