Watch Flawless (1999) movie trailer instantly, no need to login! Free web-based film recommendation service. I don't know if worlds really exist like the one in 'Flawless.' ' I don't know if there are still dance halls in New York where you pay by the dance, although I see them from time to time in the movies. Or rooming houses where everyone is a character out of Tennessee Williams. Or stories that can involve, at the same time, hero cops, drag queens, two-bit drug dealers and gay Republicans. An ultraconservative police officer suffers a debilitating stroke and is assigned to a rehabilitative program that includes singing lessons - with the drag queen next door. Flawless (1999) on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more. What to Watch Latest Trailers IMDb TV IMDb Originals IMDb Picks IMDb Podcasts. Awards & Events.
Movie Flawless 1999 Full Movie
Koontz is the De Niro character, a security guard who was a hero back in 1988 during a hostage crisis. Now he's getting too old for the work. One night he gets involved in a disturbance in the flophouse where he lives. A stroke leaves him partially paralyzed; his speech is slurred and his walk is a lurch from one handhold to the next. His life seems over. It looked pretty drab to begin with. One night a week he went to a dance hall and paid for dances with Karen (Wanda De Jesus), and we sense the screenplay using heroic restraint to avoid the words, 'Come on, big boy--10 cents a dance.' Walt's reaction to the stroke is despair, which he presents as anger. His buddies from work come to see him, but he's not interested. He retreats inside a shell. This is a man who had few enough resources for keeping himself amused before the stroke, and now his pastime of choice is sitting and brooding. Nor can he get to know his neighbors, since most of the other residents of the flophouse seem to be hookers, drag queens or both, and he makes no secret of his distaste for homosexuals.
One of the neighbors is a drag artist named Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Some men can transform themselves into pretty women; they study Vogue magazine. Others do not make pretty women and study the works of Sophie Tucker. Rusty is in the second category--a good soul stuck in a completely impractical lifestyle that involves trying to pay the rent with one-liners instead of cash.
Walt contemplates suicide. Rehabilitation therapy is suggested--singing lessons, for example, to help his speech. Rusty has a piano, and Walt swallows his fierce pride and asks for lessons. Rusty needs the money and agrees. They make a touching couple, there on the piano bench. Walt probably figures taking singing lessons from a drag queen is marginally preferable to sticking his gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Flawless 1999 Trailer
The plot of 'Flawless' is too busy and sometimes strays into fictional hinterlands; Rusty's posse of drag friends has a way of turning up on cue, like the factory workers in 'Carmen.' A subplot about hidden drug money is a creaky distraction. But when the movie involves Walt and Rusty, it has a wacky charm. De Niro spends most of the movie locked inside a stroke-induced slur, but somehow manages to communicate despite his character's difficult speech (Rusty observes he has no troubles with the 'f' sound ). He's a pathetic coot who begins to grow on us, and for Rusty, who is a soft touch, anyway, he's an opportunity for the mother hen routine.