Skip to main contentDon't be fooled by the title: Layer Cake isn't some insipid romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant as a charming baker who falls in love with a high-society model played by Julia Roberts. While that might be an easy mistake to make, Layer Cake-a metaphor for the various levels of British society-has nothing to do with romance or baking. Based on J.J. Connolly's novel of the same name, this stylish, tightly paced thriller, laced with comedy so dark most people won't even know to laugh, is one of the best crime films to come along in years.
Daniel Craig stars as a midlevel drug dealer with no name. Craig runs a well-oiled operation that brings in tons of money for his crew and his boss, powerful gangster Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham). No Name, dressed in his best clothes and with a legitimate business to serve as a front for his drug operation, thinks he has everything figured out. "I'm not a gangster," he explains during the film's opening narration. "I'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine."
With a small fortune in laundered money waiting for him, Craig's unnamed cocaine dealer is a man with a plan: Like Ron O'Neal's dope dealer Priest in Super Fly, he's going to get out while the getting is good and retire from the drug-trafficking business once and for all. But before he can leave the life behind, his boss charges him with two missions. First, No Name must locate the missing drug-addled daughter of Price's old friend. Second, the antihero must broker a deal with the loud-mouthed Duke (Jamie Foreman) and his crew of hotheaded, trigger-happy gangsters. "Every now and then we're called upon to do something above and beyond the call of duty," Price says. "It's called sacrifice."
Craig grudgingly takes on both assignments, but what he doesn't know is that for reasons that will be revealed through a series of twists, turns and flashbacks, he's nothing but a pawn who has been set up to take a large fall. He may start out as a self-assured hustler who thinks he knows the score, but No Name is soon revealed to be far less intelligent than he, or the audience, thinks.
Making his directing debut, Matthew Vaughn is no stranger to British crime films-he produced Guy Ritchie's cult hits, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Both films gave the gritty British crime genre a flashy new coat of paint, borrowing heavily from Hong Kong action films and the work of Quentin Tarantino. Vaughn's directorial foray into the genre, however, is more subdued than Ritchie's. That's not to say Layer Cake lacks a sense of style. On the contrary, the film is packed frame to frame with stylish flourishes, including Ben Davis' slick cinematography and Jon Harris' beautiful editing. Vaughn's direction is solid and assured; the script, adapted by Connolly from his own novel, is deftly textured with a cast of colorful characters, all brought to life by a top-notch cast. But it's the work by Davis and Harris that pulls the story together.
Craig offers a powerful performance in a challenging role. As conceived by Connolly, No Name or "XXXX"-as Craig's character is labeled in the credits-is a man with not only no name but also no past. There are no frames of reference other than the present for the audience to use as means to connect with the film's hero. Despite what could easily be a device to alienate the audience for Layer Cake's protagonist, Craig's performance wins us over. His character is like a strange hybrid of Super Fly's Priest, Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name in A Fistful of Dollars and Ray Liotta in Goodfellas-and, despite his moral ambiguity, viewers will want to see him come out on top.
Fans of Ritchie's over-indulgent, hyperbolic films may come away from Layer Cake feeling a bit disappointed. (These would be the same people who were disappointed by Tarantino's Jackie Brown because it wasn't enough like Pulp Fiction.) But those who recognize the genius of films like Get Carter, Mike Hodges' seminal 1971 gangster classic, should see similar signs of greatness in Layer Cake. Drawing inspiration from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, as well as the classic gangster films of the 1930s and '40s, Vaughn mixes these influences with a healthy dose of film noir, providing a rare cinematic treat in what promises to be a summer of epic mediocrity.
Rated R Opens Friday, May 27. Fox Tower.
WWeek 2015