Layer Cake
Layer Cake is the latest entry in the British gangland chronicles and the directorial debut of Matthew Vaughn, who produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Both of those movies are primary concerned with stylizing violence rather than providing any substance. Layer Cake is definitely less splashy-for-the-sake-of-it than its predecessors, but its story of a nameless cocaine dealer trying to offload £3 million in stolen ecstasy pills for his boss while passing on the lessons he's learned in life rings only slightly less hollow. Watching Layer Cake is a bit like getting a lap dance: It's fairly satisfying while it's happening, but once it's over you immediately ask yourself, "Is that it?" Yet we keep coming back to these drug dealer/gangster movies again and again (especially slick, well-acted ones like Layer Cake) as though this time it'll be different, and someone has found a cure for the severe case of Been There, Done That which seems to infect this genre. In this case, the parallels to Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas are obvious almost to the point of absurdity. Alas, all the pithy drug-dealer wisdom in the world can't save what amounts to nothing more than an entertaining diversion.
- January 20, 2007
DVD Extras
Several deleted scenes, all of which should remain just that—deleted; two alternate endings that go the only other two directions the ending could have gone; a moderately interesting Q&A with Daniel Craig and Matthew Vaughn; a fairly lame featurette; storyboards; and a poster gallery.