- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product details
|
Reviews
Amazon.co.uk Review
As its title suggests, Layer Cake is a crime thriller that cuts into several levels of its treacherous criminal underworld. The title is actually one character's definition of the drug-trade hierarchy, but it's also an apt metaphor for the separate layers of deception, death, and betrayal experienced by the film's unnamed protagonist, a cocaine traffic middle-man played with smooth appeal by Daniel Craig. Listed in the credits only as "XXXX," the character is trapped into doing a favor for his volatile boss, only to have tables turned by his boss's boss (Michael Gambon) in a twisting plot involving a stolen shipment of Ecstasy, a missing girl, duplicitous dealers, murderous Serbian gangsters, and a variety of lowlifes with their own deadly agendas. As adapted by J.J. Connolly (from his own novel) and directed by Matthew Vaughan (who earned his genre chops as producer of Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch), Layer Cake improves upon those earlier British gangland hits with assured pacing, intelligent plotting, and an admirable emphasis on plot-moving dialogue over routine action. Sure, it's violent (that's to be expected) and not always involving, but it's smarter than most thrillers, and Vaughan's directorial debut has a confident style that's flashy without being flamboyant. --Jeff Shannon
Synopsis
A West London drug dealer is caught in a high stakes game of life and death when he's duped into trying to sell one million hits of Ecstasy stolen from a vicious Serbian drug lord.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:DVD
With a considerable amount of cash saved from his, ahem, dealings. A London drug dealer is all set to retire abroad and start a new life. However his mob boss Jimmy Price has two jobs for him to do immediately......
Layer Cake is directed by Matthew Vaughn. Vaughn is more well known as Guy Ritchie's producer on his early British gangster genre forays. Suffice to say he had some insight into what made those films {Snatch et al} hugely popular with the watching British public. How pleasing it is then to say that Vaughn, by showing restraint and an unfussy approach, has crafted a film that's more than equal to the best of Britain gangster faves, and actually sets new parameters for toning a film. By focusing more on mood and atmosphere over bombastic scenarios, Vaughn, aided by a superlative Daniel Craig as the nameless dealer, lifts the film above its conventional plot arc. In what could have been a standard tale of a man doing one last job before going straight, we, along with Craig, find that all roads are blocked, it's as if there is some higher force at work here.
Layer Cake also scores high for its more easy on the eye filming of London, this is no destitute capital where tower blocks loom like monsters over the characters. This London is thriving, vim and vitality, the place to be, seediness is far from the ebullient crowd. Ben Davis' photography perfectly complimenting the engrossing score from Lisa Gerrard & Ilan Eshkeri, both of which serve to make London an extra character in the story. The film however is not perfect, at 105 minutes it's actually too short, something that only becomes apparent when all the plot strands come crashing together in a rushed last quarter. Yet in spite of that failing, the ending delivers a jolt to the system, to crown, what to me at least, is one of Britain's finest and tidiest gangster offerings. 9/10
Layer Cake is directed by Matthew Vaughn. Vaughn is more well known as Guy Ritchie's producer on his early British gangster genre forays. Suffice to say he had some insight into what made those films {Snatch et al} hugely popular with the watching British public. How pleasing it is then to say that Vaughn, by showing restraint and an unfussy approach, has crafted a film that's more than equal to the best of Britain gangster faves, and actually sets new parameters for toning a film. By focusing more on mood and atmosphere over bombastic scenarios, Vaughn, aided by a superlative Daniel Craig as the nameless dealer, lifts the film above its conventional plot arc. In what could have been a standard tale of a man doing one last job before going straight, we, along with Craig, find that all roads are blocked, it's as if there is some higher force at work here.
Layer Cake also scores high for its more easy on the eye filming of London, this is no destitute capital where tower blocks loom like monsters over the characters. This London is thriving, vim and vitality, the place to be, seediness is far from the ebullient crowd. Ben Davis' photography perfectly complimenting the engrossing score from Lisa Gerrard & Ilan Eshkeri, both of which serve to make London an extra character in the story. The film however is not perfect, at 105 minutes it's actually too short, something that only becomes apparent when all the plot strands come crashing together in a rushed last quarter. Yet in spite of that failing, the ending delivers a jolt to the system, to crown, what to me at least, is one of Britain's finest and tidiest gangster offerings. 9/10
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
