‘Flawless’: Moving, Violent Tale of Two Men’s Unlikely Friendship

“Flawless” this Joel Schumacher film is not, but it plays so well that that scarcely matters. It was Schumacher’s inspired idea to bring together a macho ex-security guard and a drag queen and see what would happen, and he had the good fortune to cast Robert De Niro, whose company also produced the film, and also the protean, fearless Philip Seymour Hoffman. De Niro and Hoffman are at once amusing and moving, and the result is a lively entertainment that manages some deft consciousness-raising.

In a dingy Beaux Arts apartment house on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, De Niro’s Walt Koontz prepares for a night out by covering up the gray creeping into his hair at the very moment his upstairs, across-a-light-well neighbor, Hoffman’s Rusty Zimmerman, is putting the finishing touches on his makeup. The trim, rugged Walt is heading for a dance hall where he’ll tango with his regular partner (Wanda De Jesus) before winding up in bed with her. Rusty is getting ready for a night’s work as Busty Rusty, the Hostess With the Mostest, emcee and piano accompanist at a popular drag club.

Now retired, Walt is an authentic hero with the citations and trophies to prove it--a decade earlier he saved lives during a bank holdup. Long divorced, he leads a simple but contented life with a bunch of cronies who remain in awe of his bravery. Walt and Rusty don’t really know each other, but their loathing is mutual. Rusty is constantly making gowns for his club colleagues and holding show rehearsals in his crowded, gaudy apartment, with Walt constantly complaining about the noise. Walt and Rusty and his pals yell back and forth, and you can well imagine the kind of language they use.

Meanwhile, Schumacher has been setting up the incident that will turn the enemies into friends. Not surprisingly, one of the other neighbors and her boyfriend are involved in drugs, with the boyfriend foolish enough to rip off the scary neighborhood drug dealer, Mr. Z (Luis Saguar), for a substantial sum of money. When the dealer’s thugs come calling and the bullets start flying, the unwitting Walt goes into action, trying to save the girl’s life--only to end up felled by a stroke that leaves his right side paralyzed and his speech substantially impaired.

Devastated, Walt becomes an instant recluse, too proud to leave his apartment except to limp out at night once a week for groceries. A dedicated doctor (the always-wonderful Mahdur Jaffrey), however, seeks him out, arranges for a physical therapist (Kyle Rivers) to come to him and advises singing lessons as a way of improving his speech. Thus Walt unexpectedly needs Rusty, who could use the money.

Walt gets much more from Rusty than a gradual improvement in his speech. He discovers how gutsy Rusty, who has no time for pity, either for Walt or himself, has to be simply in being himself. Rusty is a transsexual who longs for the expensive surgery and treatments needed to match up with what he believes to be his true gender. Walt may see Rusty as caught up in a sexual fantasy, but it’s Rusty who gives Walt constant reality checks. Ever so slowly they become friends, both loners longing for love and both possessed of much strength of character. Beneath wildly different exteriors Walt and Rusty at heart have more in common than either initially would like to acknowledge.

Meanwhile, Mr. Z and his henchmen are still searching for that missing money, and their frustration only heightens their savagery. While Schumacher does work the fate of that loot into his plot, you wish he could have played down the familiar brutal urban melodrama violence and put his screen time to better use in exploring Walt and Rusty’s differing yet overlapping worlds even more completely. (There is, however, a gratifying confrontation between Rusty and his glittery friends and a group of conservatively dressed gay men, assimilationists who clearly wish the drags would disappear from the face of the Earth.)

In short, it would have been fun to spend more time with such barely glimpsed divas as Joey Arias and Jackie Beat than with thugs on a merciless rampage. In any event, no one can accuse Schumacher of stinting on action, even though what’s of real interest here is his exploration of what it means to be a man.

De Niro underplays to the stocky Hoffman, so memorable in “Happiness,” “Boogie Nights” and other films. Rusty may pin up glamour stills of Joan Crawford and other gay icons, but in his fluttery femininity--although not in his street survivor’s vocabulary--he brings to mind Helen Morgan’s plump, fading burlesque queen in “Applause.”

Where “Flawless” is flawless is in Jan Roelfs absolutely authentic production design, Daniel Orlandi’s right-on costumes and in Declan Quinn’s rich, noirish cinematography. You’re not likely to forget Rusty--and Hoffman could well be remembered in the upcoming awards season.

* MPAA rating: R, for pervasive language and strong violence. Times guidelines: Language is extremely strong, as is the violence; adult themes and situations.

‘Flawless’

Robert De Niro: Walt Koontz

Philip Seymour Hoffman: Rusty

Barry Miller: Leonard Wilcox

Chris Bauer: Jacko

An MGM presentation of a Tribeca production. Writer-director Joel Schumacher. Producers Schumacher and Jane Rosenthal. Executive producer Neil Machlis. Cinematographer Declan Quinn. Editor Mark Stevens. Music Bruce Roberts. Costumes Daniel Orlandi. Production designer Jan Roelfs. Art director Sarah Knowles. Set decorator Leslie Pope. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

In general release.