The Italian Job practically invented the trend, and they’ve been coming out at a rate of knots ever since.   Yep, see one knowing working class British crime/heist thriller, you’ve seen ’em all, right? Go back to the 80s and it was the late Bob Hoskins who picked up Michael Caine‘s mantle with The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa, and they’ve been coming out ever since.

Well, the comparisons between Layer Cake and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are pretty plain, and with Guy Ritchie‘s follow-up Snatch, plus many more – not necessarily content, more the style.  I watched The Bank Job recently, and Sexy Beast.  Lots more if you go look for them.

The difference from the ones that came out before was that the new-style films are easy to spot.  The later ones are fresh, funny, fast-cut, foul-mouthed and knowingly quirky.  They are quick to engage the attention, deploy stereotypes and well-known faces like it was going out of fashion, employ twists aplenty and generally aim to entertain as well as thrill.  they employ numerous gangs of villains, lots of drugs, firearms, double-crosses, East End locations, explosive action that doesn’t give the audience time to settle in their seats or grow bored.

In other words, they were a stylised reinvention of the sub-genre with a peculiarly British eccentric underworld flourish: 50s neo-noir crime B-pics are being relaunched for the 21st Century.

I could be reviewing any among this notable collection, but the one I’ve chosen is Layer Cake, directorial debut of the same Matthew Vaughn who directed the Kingsman films.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a fondness for  a number of these films and may yet give them their own moment of glory.  In my humble opinion, Layer Cake seems worthy as a representative member of the group, since it features all the key ingredients, right down to Michael Gambon‘s fruity super-villain Eddie Temple, less than one generation out of the East End, complete with fake tan and sharp suit.

The principle of the layer cake mentioned in the title is that the world of British villainy is strictly hierarchical, and while criminals at various levels will talk up their roles they are ultimately answerable to those several rungs above, the ones who pull the strings.

So it is that while Daniel Craig‘s suavely rugged unnamed cocaine dealer (hereafter XXXX) can carve out a good living, he is handicapped by the scheming of those above him in the pecking order.  This comes firstly in the shape of expansive upper-middleman Jimmy Price (the wonderful Kenneth Cranham) and his enforcer Gene (lovely performance by Colm Meaney), who forces Craig’s character to flog pure ecstasy tabs stolen by a paranoid cokehead called The Duke (Jamie Foreman) from a Serbian gang, and also to track the cokehead daughter of Gambon’s Temple, all of which leads them into trouble with all of the above plus a Scouse gang.

Craig and his sidekick Morty (quiet apart from when he beats another two-bit thug to within an inch of his life), played with glorious understatement by George Harris, have to find a way out of the scenario, play off the different gangs against one another, find the girl, lose the dope and earn a few quid for themselves.  The plot may appear convoluted, but it is worked through with clockwork precision to deliver a satisfying ending with all loose ends neatly tied – another common factor.

J J Connolly‘s zingy adaptation of his own novel certainly helps here, though some reckon the script to be less with it than Ritchie’s effort in Lock Stock.  If so, there certainly isn’t much in it, but to my mind Layer Cake comes out on top in several aspects.  Quoting Ebert:

“The movie was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and this one works better than those films because it doesn’t try so hard to be clever and tries harder to be menacing… Craig is fascinating here as a criminal who is very smart, and finds that is not an advantage because while you might be able to figure out what another smart person is about to do, dumbos like the men he works for are likely to do anything”.

Indeed, while XXXX and Bond are polls apart, Craig is the same inscrutable chiselled face, albeit battered and bruised in some scenes.  If anything, he seems more at home in the world of dodgy drug deals, helped by the occasional touch of levity to offset his otherwise well-to-do granite-faced dealer, a man used to being in control who suddenly finds he is out of his depth, as Ebert suggests, in the face of blockheads who drag him down to their level.

Craig is in good company too.  Apart from the names mentioned above, Layer Cake sounds like a who’s who of British character acting talent.  For example, the ubiquitous Tom Hardy, Dexter Fletcher (who also appeared in Lock Stock), Sally Hawkins, Sienna Miller, Jason Flemyng and Ben Whishaw (aka Bond’s Q) all make delicious cameos.  If anyone steals the movie though, it has to be Gambon’s gangster send-up of Temple.

Not a safe place to be, London.  Better stick to the country club and not double-cross anybody.