“My name?  If you knew that you’d be as clever as me.”

Daniel Craig (Road to Perdition, The Jacket) plays the man billed only as XXXX, an unnamed hero and consummate professional.  XXXX is part of the drug underworld of the UK, a commodities trader of sorts who does not see himself as a gangster at all.  He is a businessman, concerned only with his own security and his own bottom line.  He has no interest in the gangster lifestyle; in fact, he looks down on it, a dead-end lifestyle practiced by a rare few.  There is an interesting moment in Layer Cake where Gene (Meaney), an old school criminal who knows everyone and has seen it all, opens his freezer and shows XXXX a dead body.  “That’s what playing gangster will get you,” Gene says.

The Duke (Jaime Foreman) is playing gangster.  He robs a Dutch crime boss of a large cache of ecstasy and is in way over his head.  We only have to look at Duke to see what a lightweight he is: phony swagger, big talk, gangster movie cliches, but none of that makes him any less dangerous.  When the robbery goes bad, even Duke can see that he is in over his head.  He get paranoid, and he needs to unload the E most riki tik, and that is where XXXX comes in.  He is looking to retire, but before than can happen he is asked for two favors by crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham).  Duke, playing well out of his league, has made living very dangerous for everyone, and XXXX must negotiate the sale of all the ecstasy and smooth over everything.

The other part of the deal is that XXXX must also locate the missing, drug addled daughter of one of London’s more powerful criminals, Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon).  Eddie looks at XXXX as a younger version of himself, a young guy coming up, paying the same dues required of everyone else.  He has a better sense of where XXXX is heading than the man himself, and that puts him at an advantage, an advantage he relishes.  Eddie knows where his daughter is, and he knows that the so-called search and the ecstasy deal are all moves by Jimmy to get XXXX out of the way, to make an example out of him.

Layer Cake is a dense, novelistic film that takes it time letting the story unfold and allowing us to find the characters.  The film moves leisurely, and at times feels quite a bit longer than its (roughly) one hour and fifty minute pace.  Originally written - by J.J. Connolly, author of the novel on which the film is based - for Guy Ritchie to direct.  Ritchie proved unavailable, and the directing duties fell to Matthew Vaughn, a first timer at directing who produced Ritchie’s Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  To look at the film, one would never guess that Vaughn had never directed.  The film is more assured than typical films of its ilk; the tone remains consistent throughout, and the acting is pitch perfect.  This film will probably never be accused of being “a genre film that defies convention,” Layer Cake does the opposite: it embraces its genre conventions, owning them.  Vaughn and company know why you want to see this film, and they never fail to deliver.  It must be said that Ritchie’s flash is missed in some scenes.  Vaughn tells the film in such a deliberately straightforward fashion that the flashes of style he does interject seem out of place.  The complaints here are minor, though, the writing and performances more than making up for the lack of directorial exuberance. 

Something is seriously wrong if Daniel Craig does not become another Jude Law or Clive Owen after the release of this film.  He gives a complicated performance as the unnamed hero of our tale.  He walks a fine line between manipulator and manipulated, and he pulls it off stunningly.  It is never explicit just how much he is caught up in the events of the story and how much he is driving them.  Craig is surrounded by a stellar supporting cast, not the least of which is Michael Gambon (The Life Aquatic, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and many, many others) as the untouchable Eddie Temple.  Gambon imbues Temple with a care free professionalism, presenting him as a man who has done too much and come too far to take things too seriously, but also as someone who knows how the game is played and does not play outside the rules.  Of course, it would be irresponsible not to mention the beautiful, the ravishing, the sensuous Sienna Miller, one of the drop dead sexiest women to grace a motion picture screen in many a moon.  Watching her on screen - which is all one can do whenever she is on camera - one can think only two things: her performance is great, and Jude Law is a lucky, lucky man.

As more and more layers are added to our cake, the story heats up more and more, and XXXX finds himself playing gangster on an ever deadlier level.  It is a game he never wanted to play, and despite his criminal leanings, he never really puts himself in danger until he does.  The stakes keep increasing, and he finds himself in much the same position as Duke: out of his league.  It is only with one broad, bold stroke that he is able to give himself some breathing room.  He is even spared the final irony of it all: the ecstasy never mattered in the first place.

Layer Cake is a crime story that will be familiar to many, an age old tale of a guy who just wants out of the life.  This is a premise that has been revisited over and over, especially in the post-Tarantino years, but rarely as well, and rarely with as much intelligence.

Film Rating: êêêê  (out of 5)