Layer Cake

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(c) AJMalouin 2006
(Ratings: 2 by Al and 30 by Caryl) (2004/UK. Directed by Matthew Vaughn.) (1 hr 45. Rated R for strong and brutal violence, sexuality, nudity, foul language and drug usage.)
Films affect us, and we affect films. The writer, director, and editor each make their own film. The audience then comes into a theatre and interprets the film as they see it. Caryl hated this particular film for its disgusting language, torture scenes, drug usage and portrayal of the lives of drug dealers. Al liked it a lot for its sleek, hip attitude, clever editing, infectious sound track and multi-layered story line.

In “Layer Cake,” a successful cocaine dealer plans an early, secret, and wealthy retirement. Before he can get out, however, he is ordered to carry out two more small assignments as “personal favors” to his drug kingpin boss.

The gangster Eddie Temple explains the process. “You’re born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you’re up in the rarefied atmosphere and you’ve forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son.”

First screened at the Sundance Film Festival, “Layer Cake” is a hip, gritty, dirty-sleek-London, English-accent version of a familiar plot. That plot is “Let’s pull one last job in this dirty, rotten (illegal) business and then we can turn legit and take up farming, or something.”

The trick, of course, is to pull off the last job without buying the farm, or having something similar happen. This familiar plot is one that always conjures up a musical score of “No one here gets out alive…” and therein lies the dramatic tension of this riveting film.

Daniel Craig stars and narrates the film as a well-dressed urbane drug dealer who treats drugs as any other commodity that is merchandised to customers. “No different from hair spray or deodorant,” he says. Staying both above the fray and under the radar, the Craig character (whose name is listed as “XXX” in the film’s credits) treats his job as a business. He has certain rules which he assures us will get him quietly and richly out of this slimy, sick career— right after he performs these last “favors.”

Things start falling apart faster than they can be mended, however.

When they do, our hero’s cool, calm, calculated veneer starts sliding off him faster than gooey icing on an August afternoon.

“Layer Cake” is a brilliant film with a complex and constantly evolving plot, and many fine acting performances. These include those of Kenneth Cranham as Jimmy Price, the boss who asks for the two favors, and of Michael Gambon, as Eddie Temple, a criminal contemporary of Jimmy Price. The two powerful performances of these two actors as these two powerful criminals are mesmerizing and terrifying. Their hypnotic influence over their territories and the serfs who work for them make it slowly and inexorably clear that our hero is nowhere as near removed from the fray as he would have liked us to believe he is when he spoke the film’s opening monologue.

There is also one moment in this film that is totally totally unexpected, even by a person who sees 180 or more films and movies a year.

Al considers this to be a must-see film, and will see it again.

Caryl can’t forget about it soon enough.