Sweet Inspiration
'Layer Cake' is a rich, dark, edgy Faustian fable

How impressive is actor Daniel Craig in the buzz-worthy English gangster thriller Layer Cake? He inhabits the role and the screen with so much quiet authority, most viewers won't even realize until the last couple of seconds that the character he plays has no name. It's not like the character is a cypher: he has brains, personality, resourcefulness, and a vast, pulsing minefield of conflict to traverse in the course of the plot, and Craig is so compelling, we're with him every dicey step of the way. He don't need no stinkin' name.

Craig, the man everyone pretty much agrees will be the next James Bond (if there is a next installment in that creaky franchise), gives Layer Cake its guts. But he's by no means the whole show. Based on a J. J. Connolly novel about the UK drug underground, it boasts a savvy script by Connolly for rookie director Matthew Vaughn, who previously produced the Guy Ritchie films, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. Layer Cake has the chutzpah of a Ritchie film, and some of the same bravura violence. But Vaughn's style is less in-your-face, with elegant compositions, endlessly clever dissolves, and fluid storytelling.

Craig plays a character we're obliged to call Mr. X. You wouldn't notice him on the street; clean-cut and well-mannered, he looks like any other confident young businessman in a modest suit with a briefcase, or in jeans and T-shirt after hours. Which is what he is: a businessman ("not a gangster") whose commodity is cocaine. He believes in a small operation with a low overhead, sticks to a business plan, and skillfully launders his profits. He doesn't use the product, hates guns, and knows to "avoid like the fucking plague, loud, attention-seeking, wannabee gangsters." His theory is all this stuff will be legal soon enough, so he'd best take advantage of the current "prohibition" while he can.

But things go awry on his way to cashing out and retiring in style. His supplier, near the top of the food chain, orders him to ferret out the cokehead daughter of an old friend. Unable to wriggle out of the obligation, Mr. X puts out a few feelers and nets himself a world of trouble. Rival gangs clash over stolen goods, crosses are doubled, old debts are paid, and blood is spilled. Like a classic film noir hero, Mr. X is forced to match wits with the big dogs while sorting out his enemies from his allies—among them his sleek muscle man (George Harris), the supplier's adversarial, hotheaded henchman, (Colm Meany), and a luscious blonde mystery woman (Siena Miller) so provocative she leaves the boudoir to slip into something less comfortable: a black lace garter belt and push-up bra.

Layer Cake can be a nasty piece of work at times, but underneath it all beats the heart of a sly and uncompromising morality play. It's also the kind of smart, intricately plotted filmmaking where every fleeting image and chance remark adds up to something in the end. Despite Mr. X's attempts to remain aloof and unsullied by the nature of his business, his journey is a descent into Hell, foreshadowed at every turn by references to the damnation of Faust, or a prominently displayed book spine that reads Dante.

But the movie has more than cleverness going for it. It's a genuinely horrific moment for Mr. X when he finally, irrevocably crosses over to the Dark Side and is forced to take a life. And the psychological aftermath is devastating as he stalks about his flat in self-loathing torment, seeking oblivion by whatever means available—no matter that his victim was a slimeball about to order Mr. X's own death. If Anakin Skywalker conveyed one tiny fraction of this kind of anguish over his decision to turn Sith in the latest Star Wars epic, George Lucas would have made a masterpiece.

The icing on this Layer Cake is dear old Michael Gambon, all seedy aplomb as a big shot in the organization who compares the stratified criminal underworld to the layers of a cake. It's left to the ruthlessly deadpan Gambon to deliver the film's mantra: "It all ends in tears," he sighs, of the opera Faust. "These arrangements usually do."

LAYER CAKE With Daniel Craig, Colm Meany, and Michael Gambon. Written by J. J. Connolly. Directed by Matthew Vaughn. A Sony Classics release. Rated R. 105 minutes. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, June 2, 2005