LAYER CAKE
Daniel Craig, Colm Meany, Michael Gambon, Sienna Miller. Dir. Matthew Vaughn, SONY, 2004Matthew Vaugh produced Guy Ritchie's comic sendups of classic UK & US crime films, LOCK, STOCK, & TWO SMOKING BARRELS & SNATCH. That association, though used heavily in marketing Vaughn's film (I used it a few days ago), proves misleading. In their commentary, Vaughn & Ritchie identify about half the film's biggest laughs as "completely unintentional." In their partnership's division of labor up to '04, Ritchie made the funny movies, and Vaughn intended to make the serious ones.
At which he succeeds, in spectacular form, where LAYER CAKE's concerned. Indeed, it's much more the UK's belated answer to/update of Mann's '95 HEAT. Vaugn works with the same outsized canvas, brings if anything even more style than Mann, and fashions a plot that, to discuss it at all, threatens to implode the souffle.
Daniel Craig plays West End cocaine wholesaler Mr. X, a man so sure the drug trade is a corporate enterprise he decides to take early retirement wuthout consulting Jimmy, his boss. Jimmy decides to instruct Mr. X in how their world truly works. Everything follows from that.
The actual story not only gives the film its name, it constitutes a great rarity in this world. Truthful advertising. LAYER CAKE IS a layer cake, or one of those tri-layer cocktails that slowly merges into one undrinkable whole, or a chili sundae alternating chili, cheese, & sour cream. It's also a souffle, sensitive to the wrong vibrations, & a house of cards, ready to topple with an errant breath. Am I mixing my metaphors? Pick any you like, they fit the comparison.
Daniel Craig had just been announced as the new James Bond when LAYER CAKE debuted stateside. The ensuing success of CASINO ROYALE & the resurrected franchise probably explains why Vaughn never quite got around to the sequel LAYER CAKE's surprising success made possible. It's easy enough to see why SONY would be less than thrilled to have Craig heading up another crime-adjacent franchise right when CASINO ROYALE passed the $1B mark, and it's just as unfortunate. Much as I like Craig's Bond, LAYER CAKE's Mr. X is Craig seemingly at his most naturalistic. Seemingly because I suspect his most at-ease & organic-feeling performances live 180° from the man, himself. Still. Mr. X smiles without frightening people. Everytime Craig smiles at a woman over his 007-arc I want to yell, "RUN!"
I am aware that by mentioning LAYER CAKE in the same breath as HEAT that I'm making a bold statement. As my writeup of HEAT & its fraternal twin, THE INSIDER, indicated today, HEAT has steadily earned its place in film legend, now one of the greatest non-mob-related crime epics ever. Comparing anything to HEAT takes the same kind of hubris as comparing crime movies to GOODFELLAS. Those pictures subjected to that comparison fare poorly, overall. David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE is one of GOODFELLAS' better clones & it's agonizingly obvious the entire time. LAYER CAKE brings the scale & scope, the perfect casting, the story to which one pays such close attention its resolution only seems insanely obvious in hindsight, as the credits roll.
Daniel Craig breathed new life into James Bond, to be trite af. More than anyone other than the underappreciated Timothy Dalton, Craig balanced Bond's central contradiction, a "good guy" with a capacity for psychopatholical brutality, a blunt instrument with a heart of toffee. Craig, not as hemmed in as Connery, took a number of roles between Bonds, some possibly with an eye toward franchising, but none remotely like 007. Generally enjoyable, for my money Craig never returned to the deceptively-casual charm & charisma of Mr. X, & more's the pity. Though he plays off as many other actors as Pacino or DeNiro in HEAT, Craig powers every scene, even those dominated by the other actor. It's his choices, mostly predetermined by Jimmy and by those OVER Jimmy, which set up each scene's raison d'etre regardless of who does the talking. Back in 1989, as DIE HARD entered the Hollywood action canon, Paramount released Tony Scott's Willis-piloted actioner, THE LAST BOY SCOUT. At the time, those few critics who found praise for Scott's picture suggested that, if we had to have a Willis action franchise, we could do worse than have it be based on LAST BOY SCOUT. Monday, I thought that about LAYER CAKE. The James Bond Trilogy, which ended up spanning five movies, mark some of the best, most consistent movies in the venerable franchise. If I could have a trilogy of Mr. X's adventures, I would hardly be less pleased.
Between the two, both Mann & Vaughn excell in finding great faces for great characters. If Vaughn falters beside Mann it's because Vaughn doesn't always indicate there's much behind the mask, particularly where women are concerned. Guy Ritchie was married to Madonna at the time of LAYER CAKE, Vaughn to Claudia Schiffer - it's hard to think that does not in some way influence their female casting, but if so Sienna Miller gets cheated. Cosmetically delightful, Miller brims with obvious intelligence but presents/plays mostly as cheesecake. I like to hope another couple of these would have given her more to do, but we'll never know.
I want to drive home one point above & beyond all others. LAYER CAKE is NOT a comedy. Forget Guy Ritchie's association. Readers who missed LAYER CAKE could be thinking that SNATCH had a darker, more "serious" side in the form of Pitt & the Travelers' brand of justice, but that shouldn't lead them to expect a slight step down with Vaugh's film. It isn't. It's a very tall step up, or an eight-lanes-wide step over to LAYER CAKE. HEAT is the best film of its kind & one of the best, period, of the 1990s. LAYER CAKE may be its closest peer in the Aughts. See it for yourself. After you agree with me, as you must, tell friends. Let's make LAYER CAKE as discussed & fetishized as Mann.
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