Layer Cake
By: Mark Runyon | Category: DVD Archive | 09/12/05 | 11:33 PM
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Grade: B | Genre: Drama
Summary: Layer Cake charges in like a starving lion yet fades out very sheepishly. If the writer had put a little more time into mapping out the final twists and turns, this could have easily have been an 'A' film.
So you wanna be gangsta, huh? What makes you think you have what it takes to live the good life? Can you buy a Hummer without slobbering on the hood? Does your anus stay pucker free when you hear the blaring sirens of the five-o zooming in? Is Rockstar Video Games hounding you day and night to model the next "Grand Theft Auto" based on your filthy life? Congratulations, you just might be a gangsta. The 70's marked the renaissance of the gangster film. You had such classics like Mean Streets, the Godfather and Scarface. Recent years have been a bit slim. Tarantino slashed up the space with fresh takes like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction only to go make the ultimate homage to Kung Fu films. Guy Richie scored monster gangsta cool points with Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but most of us can't think past the island stinker Swept Away. Layer Cake struts onto the scene just in time to keep us hungry and trigger-happy. |
Layer Cake is a look at the professional drug world, London-style. Yes, above the seedy crack dealers and strung out junkies, there are an army of well-dressed businessmen lined up to make obscene amounts of cash preying on the addictions of the hapless street whores. They are cold, calculating and devilishly smart, exploiting every possible advantage and taking every precaution to keep from getting nipped. Daniel Craig (Road to Perdition, The Jacket), the man getting tossed about in the James Bond rumor mill, plays a sharp middleman, dealing in cocaine, who has it all and is days away from leaving the keys in the ignition of this purring Ferrari to walk away from the life for good. His intricate network of suppliers and customers isn't hip to his plan yet, and that's how he likes it.
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| Layer Cake |
Starring: Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Sienna Miller, Kenneth Cranham, George Harris & Louis Emerick
Director: Matthew Vaughn |
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| View the Trailer (Quicktime) |
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In his last days of service, he's asked to track down the drugged up daughter of a wealthy socialite as a favor for his supplier, and he also finds himself dealing with a piker who has magically stumbled onto one million ecstasy pills that he is asked to place. It all smells more than a little fishy and with each step his security blanket becomes a little more frayed. His world begins collapsing in, seeking to swallow him up. You know when you are hanging bound and gagged from the top of a building, things have gotten a wee bit out of your control.
Truthfully, the first time I heard that Daniel Craig's name was seriously being considered to wield the lethal Walther PPK, I thought the Bond crew was hopped up on something of their own, given his rather under whelming film catalog to date. After watching Layer Cake, all questions have been securely put to rest. He has that steel edge in his eyes that can wear down an enemy without a word escaping his lips. He proves himself to be a very talented actor who has patently been waiting on the right vehicle to make his mark. This feature should securely put him on the map, and if we don't see a 007 next to his name, I'm sure he'll be staring down the Mi6 spy from across the marquee.
The film features a great soundtrack including cuts from the Church, FC Kahuna as well as a score comprised by Lisa Gerrard, previously of Dead Can Dance. The film does for Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" what Reservoir Dogs did for "Stuck in the Middle with You." It's a savage scene that sits on your head like an iron, sizzling the song into your consciousness with sluggish deliria. You'll never hear this early-90's gem in the same way again.
What is truly criminal about this film is the underused Sienna Miller (voted number 4 among PM's ten sexiest women of film). From the moment Craig's character stares a hole through her on the dance floor to her unraveling those delicate silk stockings, Sienna sets the screen afire with her wanton lust and feverous desire. This sly, young vixen pretty much limits your collective vocabulary to a resounding "hot damn!" Maybe they had to restrict her screen time for fear of melting the projectors. Gooey celluloid all over the floor is so hard to clean up. If nothing else, she shows us that, even when guns, drugs, and assassins are involved, women are always the most dangerous ingredient to watch out for.
The biggest problem with this otherwise very solid film is its weak ending. It charges in like a starving lion, yet fades out very sheepishly. The old switcheroo is fairly transparent, and the final act feels highly unsatisfying, more or less taping an ending on. If the writer had put a little more time into mapping out the final twists and turns, this could have easily have been an 'A' film. Instead it is a very good one that reminds us that just because Guy Richie is busy lighting up his "Lucky Star," while Kabbalah dines on his soul, doesn't mean there aren't clever British filmmakers ready to take up that mantle to string together a taut, compelling crime flick.
Buy or rent Layer Cake tonight.
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