Layer Cake

Part of the 2005 USA Film Festival

I love British gangster movies. They’re like a breath of fresh air on a genre that’s beginning to show its age.

If you loved Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; if you loved Snatch; if you loved Gangster No. 1 or Sexy Beast or The Limey; then Layer Cake is your movie.

Sure, there’s just as much formula here as there is with the American/Italian counterparts. There’s all the usual suspects: a dash of thick cockney accents, layers of labyrinthian plot twists, generous helpings of great European trance beats and britpop, and a peppering of hyper-violence, and slathering of cool stylish filmmaking.

It would be pointless to try to explain Layer Cake. A good chunk of loving Brit gangster flicks is perpetually being a bit lost in the whodunit of it all. Suffice it to say that this unnamed bloke (the superb Daniel Craig from Road to Perdition) is a middleman drug dealer. He’s a very smart “businessman who happens to be selling illegal narcotics.”

The soundtrack is one of the best I’ve heard in a long time. And the performances were all top notch: Colm Meaney, Michael Gambon, Sienna Miller (from TV’s short-lived “Fast Eddy”).

Bu ja-know wa Oi fink? Oi fink ya gonna loik i a la!

(You’ll be speaking cockney in no time!)

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5 Comments

  1. Cool, Carl.

    {rant warning}

    Please be aware of the film’s MPAA rating. I used to review movies with all that info, but my personal belief now is one of passing that responsibility off to the consumer. And with the internet, there’s absolutely no reason why anyone can’t become fully educated and prepared for the product they purchase these days. It still completely bewilders me how so many people (present company excluded) find themselves in a movie that shocks them, and yet they didn’t research it ahead of time. “That dang Hollywood, filling my mind with evil!” Who’s fault is that?

    {end of rant}

    There’s a couple quick scenes in Layer Cake that might easily offend. That’s all I’ll say.

  2. I really enjoyed Snatch and have seen it several times. I have Lock, Stock on my Netflix list and will have to add this because it sounds interesting. Thx, Carl

  3. Absolutely loved this film, could stare at Daniel Craig all day! How fantastic is that man, has the most amazing eyes i have ever come across. That suit at the end…… Stunning!

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