There is no greater actor working today than Philip Seymour Hoffmann and now he has won the Oscar for "Capote" maybe the rest of the world will acknowledge the fact. That he wasn't nominated for "Flawless" will always remain one of the great mysteries of the movies. He's a New York drag queen teaching stroke victim Robert De Niro speech therapy and his performance is a life-lesson in the art of acting. He raises what would otherwise be an enjoyable. if minor, tale of a mismatched friendship into something close to essential. De Niro, too, is superb. I have always felt that playing someone with a disability is prone to Ham-a-Lot but De Niro is far too good an actor for that.
It is a very likable movie but it is also very sentimental. De Niro is miraculously cured of his homophobia when he has a stroke while the drag queen are all just a bunch of pussycats. There is a sub-plot about some stolen money that turns the latter part of the film into something of a thriller, though not a very convincing one. There is no sense of danger; you know things are going to end happily. Schumacher is far from being a great director but he does make very good genre pictures.
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