Originally published 6/6/2005
Layer Cake
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writer: J.J. Connolly, based on his novel
Producers: Adam Bohling, David Reid, Matthew Vaughn
Stars: Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Kenneth Cranham, Jamie Foreman, Michael Gambon, Sally Hawkins, Sienna Miller, George Harris, Tom Hardy
For all the drug deals, double-crosses, sex, shootings, and posh lunches that roll by in the compact running time of Layer Cake, you leave realizing that what’s really mattered in the movie are a few key conversations. They are not flashy or decorously poetic like Tarantino or Guy Ritchie (the original director before other commitments called him away) might have written them; they’re sober, matter-of-fact, the grim revelations of men facing the pasts that will not stop chasing them – like the night 30 years ago when a young man named Jerry Kilburn (Ben Brasier) stuck a shotgun in his mouth and altered the fate of almost everyone around him.
These same men must also vigilantly watch the money they cannot seem to stop people from trying to grab away. The trafficking of narcotics in Britain is presented as simply an armed mirror-image of standard corporate procedure – those who are already rich use the power of their position to feed off everyone below them and become even richer, and those who are not yet rich dream of having that kind of power so they can stop being screwed and start screwing.
Our unnamed hero (Daniel Craig), the credits call him “XXXX”, is a well-off mid-level cocaine dealer, a professional man with a clear vision of the dangers of his trade and a desire to make a clean break once he has earned his nest egg. We recognize his type – hard-faced actors like DeNiro have made bankable livings off the “one last job” genre at least as far back as Bogart in High Sierra. XXXX smartly points out that one of these days drugs will be legalized, as soon as the legally-rich get sufficiently jealous of all the money they generate. In the meantime, more adventurous “businessmen” like himself can profit.
But just as he is about to turn around whatever magic number spells retirement for him, his supplier Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) drops a bloody mess in his lap. Two, in fact – first he asks XXXX to locate the drug-addicted missing daughter of fellow tycoon Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon), a man with a scrubbed reputation but no less shark-like a background. He also sets up a deal for XXXX to buy a million Ecstasy pills from a dangerously unhinged dealer who calls himself The Duke (Jamie Foreman).
That The Duke stole these pills from a gang of Serbian war criminals who want them back is a problem. That Jimmy is not telling XXXX everything about why Eddie Temple’s daughter’s missing is another problem. And how the Duke’s snotty nephew (Ben Whishaw) has a girlfriend (Sienna Miller) that XXXX cannot keep his eyes off of? That’s a problem too. The movie reminds me most of Miller’s Crossing, in which complications pile up and double-back on themselves in the most appalling combinations, and they all seem to come down on the smart and level-headed guy in the middle because, well, everyone knows he is the smart and level-headed one.
Daniel Craig is a riveting actor for this. His U.S. career has until now been mercurial, ranging from straight-ahead snobby villainy in the first Tomb Raider movie to playing the weak and slimy gangster son of Paul Newman in Road to Perdition. Here he takes center frame and projects a rough, laconic cool that calls to mind the bloodiest moments of Steve McQueen’s career. It becomes clear why he has been bandied about as a candidate to take over the James Bond franchise.
There’s a nearly absurd amount of plot to hack your way through, and you should be prepared to spend stretches forgetting certain details or wondering what happened to particular loose ends. The accents and slang have their usual effect of muddying things just that little bit more. Fortunately, the movie is aware of this and even has a sense of humor about its need to double-back once in awhile – there’s a priceless moment where Jimmy’s right-hand man Gene (the always earthy and authentic Colm Meaney), expresses sincere regret that he forgot to share news of a major character’s death a-ways ago.
Director Matthew Vaughn makes his debut here after serving as Guy Ritchie’s long-time producer – and for what seems to be an emergency substitution he does remarkable work. His focus on mood and grit, his ability to restrain the irony and camera trickery so popular in this genre this past decade, his seriousness comes off as daring and unusual. His humor comes in at a slightly different angle from his contemporaries, in that he essentially sympathizes with his protagonists, and is not one to paint them as stupid for an easy chuckle. He is more likely to give us such an unexpected twist of the knife that laughter is the only release – watch the teasing way he veers us off on a new course just as we thought we were about to get a good old-fashioned sex scene.
In some scenes you can tell he hasn’t developed a particular flair for action, yet, but I will take a movie with a real vibe and passable action over a noisy nothing anyday. XXXX doesn’t have to tell us he’s cool in Layer Cake – he is cool. And he’s in the middle of a seriously cool movie.