Demi works daily with diamonds, but they're not her best friend.

Actually, she has no friends -- just a high-powered job at the London Diamond Corp., where the gentlemen prefer blondes and brunettes alike to stay in the corporate background. Bright, beautiful Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), however, is an ambitious executive frustrated by that shatterproof glass ceiling: One young male after another is promoted ahead of her, despite her far greater experience and years of faithful service.

"Flawless" is a diamond-heist thriller set in swinging 1960s London, when big-bucks deals abounded among South African exploiters, amoral British intermediaries and their nefarious Russian buyers.

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'Flawless'

2 1/2 stars = Average
Ratings explained

• Starring: Michael Caine, Demi Moore.
• Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language.
• Web site: flawlessfilm.com/

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Laura is not just disgruntled but edgy compared with easygoing old Hobbs (Michael Caine), the retirement-age night janitor who is invisible to management but over the years has amassed a vast amount of knowledge about how the company operates -- and has his own bone to pick with it. Slowly and slyly, Hobbs manipulates Laura's frustration, enlisting her into his ingenious scheme to pull off a hefty theft.

There are so many diamonds in the company vault, he could fill his worker's thermos without anyone even missing them. Ah, but the company has just installed a new foolproof 1960s state-of-the-art theft-prevention device: "security cameras," monitored 24 hours a day in a video control room.

Not quite foolproof -- if you know the precise sequence and duration of the rotating screen shifts. Once inside the vault (Laura provides the combination), Hobbs' plan suddenly gets more grandiose. Forget the thermos. There are enough diamonds there to fill a swimming pool -- about 100 million pounds' worth. But how to smuggle them out in a small janitor's cart? And where the hell to stash 'em if you did?

The result is a robbery of colossal proportions, the likes of which London has never seen. Even Laura, his increasingly jittery accomplice, is baffled.

"How did you get them out?" she demands, "and who's really behind this?"

Hobbs, ignoring her questions, replies: "Do you know what the hardest substance in the world is? A diamond. You rub it with a cloth, it lets off a charge. You put in water, it comes up dry. Its only enemy is another diamond."

The thieves, on the other hand, have more plentiful enemies, starting with London Diamond Co.'s apoplectic CEO, Sir Milton Ashtoncroft (Joss Ackland), and his battery of insurance investigators, headed by creepy Mr. Finch (Lambert Wilson). Finch and Hobbs, both suspicious of Laura's loyalties, alternately cajole and threaten her to cooperate.

But Hobbs puts the carats rather than the stick before his horse: Revenge is a more compelling motivation than greed.

Caine ironically reprises his trademark Cockney scoundrel in such '60s heist-genre flicks as "The Ipcress File" and "Gambit," popular for their irreverent wit and mischievous fun. Not much wit or mischief here, though. And less is Moore's chemistry with Caine. I couldn't help thinking of the erotic electricity between Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole in "How to Steal a Million." As comebacks go, this is a semi for Demi -- at best.

Director Michael Radford ("Il Postino," "The Merchant of Venice") doesn't help her much with his pedestrian pace and minimal suspense during the heist itself, although he and writer Edward Anderson deserve credit for attention to '60s details. Demi's detached demeanor -- as well as her costumes, hairdos and nervous chain-smoking -- evoke such immortal Hitchcockian heroines-in-trouble as Tippi Hedren and Janet Leigh. The smoky jazz-combo music (including Brubeck's definitive "Take Five") makes for additional period atmospheric.

"Flawless" -- not to be confused with same-titled 1999 Joel Schumacher film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert De Niro -- is a modest, mildly entertaining caper film with no burning desire to be much more.

Its primary pleasure is old pro Caine's deceptively benign janitor, ever ready with some epigrammatic exhortation. "Fortune favors the bold!" he tells Laura.

Yes. But all those diamonds in the rough, pouring down a chute, look a lot like the rock salt I get at Giant Eagle. They may be precious, but "Flawless" and its hokey ending constitute an unpolished gem.

Opens today at the Manor.