Layer Cake (2004)

Layer Cake comes to us from 2004, an era when a British gangster picture was still allowed to be about gangsters. Matthew Vaughn, directing for the first time after producing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, adapts J. J. Connolly's novel with a steady hand and no appetite for instruction. Daniel Craig plays XXXX, a cocaine distributor with a businessman's caution and a retirement plan, who is dragged through a double-cross involving a million ecstasy tablets, Serbian war criminals, and a crime lord named Eddie Temple. Temple explains the title over a drink: the criminal world is a layer cake, and everyone gets a slice. The metaphor describes gangland rank. It is not an indictment of markets.

The ensemble is white, British, and unbothered by the fact. George Harris appears in support, and the screenplay passes no comment, which is the film's general posture toward race. Women are girlfriends, addicts, and leverage: Tammy on the arm, Charlotte in a hostage exchange, Slasher as an ultimatum delivered by men. The film observes this arrangement without a flicker of concern. There is no queer undercurrent, no climate anxiety, no body-positive register, no neurodivergent character, and no history worth revising. London is wet and full of people who want money.

Style carries the rest, and carries it well. Vaughn shoots the city in cold blues and hard edits, and Craig's composure is the engine of the whole thing. He abhors violence and keeps his books tidy, and that professional code is the closest the film comes to a sermon. It never lectures. It ends with its hero bleeding on a country club step, having declined the throne, which is either tragedy or arithmetic. The picture's chief historical achievement was getting Craig the role of James Bond, and we may take that as its contribution to culture.