Director Matthew Vaughn and actor Daniel Craig have both gone on to bigger things since their 2004 collaboration Layer Cake. Vaughn found a niche for himself adapting Mark Millar-written comics into crazy action movies like Kick-Ass and the Kingsmen series. Craig, of course, went on to be James Bond.
But, as I am fond of saying, everyone has to start somewhere. Now, Craig had a decent career in various cinematic supporting roles, but Layer Cake was Vaughn’s directorial debut. Given the other Vaughn movie I reviewed for this site was the lackluster Stardust, would his first movie prove a strong one?
Short answer: yes and no.
On the one hand, Layer Cake is much closer to Vaughn’s forte than Stardust. It shows a lot more promise for the director’s future endeavors, and it does have a little bit of the class and style he’d bring to bear on the Kingsmen movies. His camera is always moving and has some interesting edits to change the scene, such as having the camera slide along a table in one location only to have it become another when the shot reaches the end of said table. Plus, the story does have a lot of twists and turns to it, making for a good crime thriller.
That said, the movie didn’t quite hold my interest all the way through the way that oddly enough Stardust did. Stardust may have been a bit of a trainwreck in many regards, but at least it never lost my interest. Layer Cake‘s various cinematic tricks lost their luster as the movie went on. To be certain, I much preferred Layer Cake to Stardust, but perhaps the best of Vaughn’s work mixes and matches the stylish criminals of Layer Cake with the outright bonkers characters of Stardust. Maybe if the Stardust characters were more outright bastards, I would have enjoyed it more.
But this review is about Layer Cake, a movie that does largely work. Craig stars as a nameless drug dealer, a man who manufactures drugs for a local crime lord. He has some strict rules to keep himself out of trouble, such as never underestimating law enforcement’s intelligence, keeping his circle of contacts small and trustworthy to avoid potential problems, and always making sure his boss got the kickback the man wanted.
Of course, for there to be drama, most if not all of the nameless criminals rules have to be broken during the course of the movie. And, as Craig’s character would expect, that brings trouble as he’s trying to retire from the life after one last score. But his boss wants him to do two things: find the drug addicted daughter of one of the boss’s associates and find a seller for a big ecstasy haul. Craig’s character can’t exactly say no to his boss, so off he goes, enlisting what trusted friends he has and trying to follow his rules with varying degrees of success.
Layer Cake does have a number of the requisite twists and turns thanks to both of the nameless criminal’s tasks. For the missing daughter, it matters who her father is and why Craig’s boss wants her. For the later, the haul only happened when a low level pack of idiots managed to rob some Serbian war criminals, and they want Craig dead because they assume he has their drugs (he does not). It also doesn’t help when Craig learns that even following his rules probably would have gotten him arrested, but ultimately, he’s left with a decision: does he want to retire or not? Retiring is his top goal, but it does seem that actually breaking the rules has a lot of rewards on its own.
In the end, Layer Cake is a nice crime movie in the Guy Ritchie mode, but Vaughn isn’t quite Ritchie. There’s potential on display for both Vaughn and Craig, a number of familiar faces in the supporting cast (particularly Tom Hardy as one of Craig’s associates), and a twisty plot, but this was hardly an all-time classic. But, you know, everyone has to start somewhere.
Grade: B-
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