Layer Cake
is half-baked.
Rooting for the bad guy can be a satisfying way to spend two hours in the dark. Just because someone makes their living doing something deplorable-selling drugs, for instance-doesn't mean we can't identify with them and cheer
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them on when the odds are stacked against them. With the right character, this task is easy, even fun, but with the anonymous drug peddling hero of
Layer Cake
(Daniel Craig), it's practically impossible.
Craig (named XXXX in the credits) introduces himself as a businessman that deals solely in large quantities of cocaine. XXXX follows a strict set of rules he's established for himself, ensuring his survival in a business that often turns deadly for his associates. After a lucrative career, XXXX has plans to leave the business, retiring with a large nest egg and living a quiet life. Before he can get out, however, he must contend with a showboating wanna-be gangster (Jamie Foreman), a manic drug lord (Kenneth Cranham) and a hard-ass competitor (Michael Gambon).
That we never learn the main character's name is secondary-XXXX is smart, suave and underworld savvy, but these traits go no deeper than his stylish suits. The character that's sketched out in the opening narration never comes to life. Craig inhabits the character in each scene as if he's waiting for his turn to speak.
The film follows a traditional caper plot that is all too familiar but not always this dissatisfying. The double-crossing the double-crosser scheme comes and goes and comes again with little fanfare as the film tumbles along, going through the motions its genre demands. XXXX's struggle to retrieve a stolen shipment of ecstasy for a Serbian drug lord (Marcel Iures) simply happens with no palpable dramatic tension or
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narrative propulsion driving the story or the characters. Literary references to the Faust legend and the connection between Dante's
Inferno
and the confectionery concoction of the title are dropped in as though forcing a metaphor on the dreary action can salvage what little story there is.
The humor of the early part of the film is all but abandoned as it wears on and the audience suffers for it. Director Matthew Vaughn has worked in this genre before, producing Guy Ritchie's
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
and
Snatch
, but his directorial debut lacks the punch, style and humor those films had in spades.
Things wrap up as expected, but Vaughn throws a curve-ball, one-liner ending that not only tacks on a romance with a beautiful blonde (Sienna Miller) but also plays the cheap card for shock value. The tactic is obnoxious, rendering an otherwise mediocre film flat-out laughable.
