Based upon JJ Connelly’s London crime novel, “Layer Cake” is about a successful cocaine dealer (Daniel Craig) who has earned a respected place among England’s Mafia elite and plans an early retirement from the business.
However, big boss Jimmy Price hands down a tough assignment: find Charlotte Ryder, the missing rich princess daughter of Jimmy’s old pal Edward, a powerful construction business player and gossip papers socialite. Complicating matters are two million pounds’ worth of Grade A ecstasy, a brutal neo-Nazi sect and a whole series of double crossings.
The title “Layer Cake” refers to the layers or levels the dealer has to go through as he painstakingly plots his own escape. What is revealed is a modern underworld where the rules have changed. There are no ‘codes’, or ‘families’ and respect lasts as long as a line.
Not knowing who he can trust, he has to use all his ‘savvy’, ‘telling’ and skills which make him one of the best, to escape his own. The ultimate last job, a love interest called Tammy and an international drugs ring, threaten to draw him back into the ‘cake mix’. But, time is running out and the penalty will endure a lifetime.
Sleek, well dressed and polite, our unnamed hero (Daniel Craig) is a consummate professional. Treating cocaine and ecstasy like any other commodity, he has made a fortune for himself by keeping his hands clean and staying under the radar. Having made the decision to retire, his aim is to break free from the world of crime, drugs and violence and live a simple, quiet life with the money he has amassed.
But before this can happen, crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) wants two last favors from him. First, he must track down the missing, drug addict daughter of powerful criminal Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon). Second, he must negotiate the sale of a huge shipment of ecstasy with The Duke (Jamie Foreman), a loose cannon petty crook playing well out of his league.
What should be a routine transaction is anything but and nothing goes according to plan. Instead, duplicity and hidden alliances become the order of the day, in a struggle for power that reaches from the crack dens of London to the highest ranks of British society. Quickly he learns he is part of a machine much greater than he imagined, and getting out won’t be quite as easy as getting in.
Production notes provided by Sony Pictures Classics.
Layer Cake
Starring: Daniel Craig, Kenneth Cranham, Dexter Fletcher, Jamie Foreman, Michael Gambon, Burn Gorman, Tamer Hassan
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay by: J.J. Connolly
Release Date: May 13th, 2005
MPAA Rating: R for strong brutal violence, sexuality, nudity, language, drug use.
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $2,339,957 (19.7%)
Foreign: $9,510,257 (80.3%)
Total: $11,850,214 (Worldwide)