Layer Cake

Layer Cake (2004) follows a cocaine dealer whose name is never spoken. He runs a clean operation, keeps away from violence and intends to retire. Then his boss gives him two jobs and both turn out to be traps. It is Matthew Vaughn's first film as director. He had produced Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Snatch, and this comes out of that world with the jokes turned down and the cold turned up. The source is J. J. Connolly's novel, and Connolly wrote the screenplay himself. Its lasting effect is in the lead. Daniel Craig's work here helped push his name forward for James Bond, and two years later he had the part in Casino Royale. The film almost seems to know: a man in a suit, held at a distance, reluctant about violence. Tom Hardy, Ben Whishaw, Michael Gambon and Sienna Miller are in the cast; Hardy and Whishaw were unknown at the time. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: British crime films, convoluted plotting, and Daniel Craig. Less good for: the plot is crowded and the names are hard to hold on a first viewing. The women are barely written, and the ending closes the film's carefully built composure with an irony it has not earned.