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Layer Cake (Widescreen Edition)
: Even though his name is never revealed during the course of the British crime thriller, "Layer Cake," we get to know the hero very well, very fast.
"I'm not a gangster," he explains. "I'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine."
This guy, identified as XXXX in the end credits, deals only in neatly wrapped kilos; he employs a smart chemist, a slick accountant and a loyal posse of heavies; he has a legitimate business on the side and he tools around London in a sleek silver Audi (station wagon).
And while he might be a "T-shirt and jeans" kind of guy, he sports very expensive-looking T-shirts and jeans.
Of course, the only reason crime thrillers stress the professionalism of their main characters is so we can watch as circumstances eventually force them to break their own rules and pay a stiff price.
Those circumstances appear in the form of Jimmy (Kenneth Cranham) a grumpy upper-level gangster who summons XXXX and demands two sketchy favors of him. XXXX complies and quickly finds himself up to his earlobes in thugs, mols, Serbian assassins and the kind of bottom-feeders he likes to shun.
"Layer Cake" was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who previously produced Guy Ritchie's "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch." All three movies have a lot in common but Ritchie's amped-up films bounce off the walls and onto the ceiling; Vaughn's is colder and more calculating - to use a Brit pop analogy, if Ritchie's movies are akin to the strutting, pub brawlers Oasis, Vaughn's is the orchestral-but-grooving The Verve.
Eventually, though, the plot becomes ridiculously complicated. While it is possible to make sense of all the scams and double-crosses, the movie is a lot more interesting when it focuses on characters instead of twists and coincidences and two particularly exaggerated violent beatings. By the last act, the movie is just chasing its own tail... and yet, somehow, it's a hard movie to dislike.
Despite its terrible title (a euphemism for the gangster hierarchy) but it oozes cool: XXXX is played by Daniel Craig who could almost be a gaunt, slightly freeze-dried Steve McQueen circa "Bullitt" ; the great Michael Gambon shows up as a phlegmatic, aging tiger of a mob boss; Sienna Miller wanders through long enough to model lingerie to the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" ; and though this is his first film, Vaughn really knows how to move a story along with style.
If he can keep the plot from overwhelming the characters next time around, he might turn out to be a really good director.
 A drug dealer with retirement on is mind gets thrown a curve-ball when his boss gives him a new job--to find the daughter of a friend. Nothing is what it seems as he finds out his boss has plotted against him and his associates. A game of cat and mouse ensues as he tries to out-think those conspiring against him. In the end it's a sad tale of the criminal underworld and how you can never leave... alive that is.
Colm Meaney has to be one of my favorite Irish actors. Every role he plays he seems to enjoy so much. His role in Star Trek: Next Generation allowed him to come into his own as an actor. The fact that he's still called on to play roles in great movies like Layer Cake is testament to his acting ability. Also, people just like to see him do his thing on-screen. You never know what to expect from him, but you darn sure know it's going to be something unexpected.
Layer Cake should've been released in theaters in the US. It had that big-screen presence to it that exceeds many films that make it but aren't worthy. Funny how the movie business works.
Layer Cake is engrossing and enjoyable to watch. I give it 5 stars for Colm Meaney alone, but the lead has great promise.
 On a one to five rating, this one dropped from a four to a two in the last ten seconds. I want to defend this statement, but yet avoid giving the specifics of what happened. Let me just say that the ending was not organically connected with the rest of the movie, but felt tacked on. In any good movie, all the various bits need to be in some sense connected from beginning to end. Otherwise, some bit might be narratively unconnected with all the rest. Unfortunately, here a profoundly random ending was stapled onto the very end, completely altering the meaning of everything that went before. Now, I can easily imagine various explanations why the film was given the ending it had, but the truth of the matter is that all of these explanations will be things brought from outside the film to explain something inside it. Flowing from the movie itself, the ending is utterly without narrative meaning.
Before the ending, I hadn't thought it was a perfect film, but I did think it was a fairly enjoyable one. I felt that the exposition of the story was a tad muddled at times and that visually the film sometimes revealed Matthew Vaughan's background as a producer rather than a director, but there was a fabulous collection of characters, and I very much enjoyed their interaction with one another. Daniel Craig in particular was fabulous in the central role, but many other superb actors fill out the large number of parts. Colm Meaney and Michael Gambon in particular are superb in their rols, but the film keeps coming back to Craig and his steely blue eyes.
The plot revolves around a highly disciplined cocaine dealer who suddenly finds himself in an intensely chaotic situation. He quickly finds that his code and plans are useless when confronted with the messiness of real life (which is also the point of the rather stupid ending--but it is a point that was so clearly made earlier that an ending more in keeping with the rest of the story would have been better, an ending that shows that good philosophy doesn't always lead to good narrative). Daniel Craig's character (we never learn his name) is pulled into a couple of messes, one involving consumating a drug buy with some extremely unprofessional crooks who have stolen a large amount of pills from a Serbian drug lord and the other the hunt for a magnate's drug abusing daughter. He finds that the drug buy was a set up and the search for the daughter actually the search for someone to use as a hostage. Things get messier and messier, but our hero manages to pull things more or less together despite multiple bumps in the road, until the rather unpleasant and unexpected ending.
I'm not sure whether to recommend this film to others or not. Until the tacked on ending, it was a fairly enjoyable film. I have read that Guy Ritchie had been slated for a long time to direct it. He and Matthew Vaughan had collaborated on LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH, but the magic that was contained in those two films was lacking here (as it was in the fiasco they jointly created in SWEPT AWAY). Perhaps Ritchie's abscence was the difference. Perhaps it was the screenplay, which was produced by the author of the novel. For whatever reason, the film as a whole is less successful by a considerable margin than the two films that preceded it, and its ending is among the worst I've ever seen in a film. I guess my first recommendation would be to see it, but try to cut out a few seconds before it stutters to an end.
When i saw the trailer for this movie I tought it wwould be something worth watching i thought it would be decent. I thought this movie had the twists and turns of snatch and lock stock and two smoking barrels and a little added love triangle (i guess). Many people i have heard don't like the ending but don't make any assumptions about it and you will be fine. This movie is now one of my favorite movies and a treasured part of my DVD collection.
In this slick British gangster movie Daniel Craig plays an anonymous cocaine dealer known only as XXXX. As criminals go, Mr. Craig plays by the rules. He keeps a low profile, isn't overly greedy, and he checks out carefully his clients before he sells to them. When the movie opens, he's trying to retire; but if that were a possibility, we wouldn't have this film that takes the cake.
The movie delivers on just about every level. The fast moving plot is intricate and convoluted; there's enough killing for the most blood-thirsty theatregoer; and Mr. Craig, who is in practically every scene, is icing on this cake. In Many of the frames he bears a striking resemblance to Steve McQueen. This movie is not to be missed for his performance alone. Perhaps Mr. Craig will become the next James Bond.
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