LAYER CAKE is a 2004 entry in the Brit gangland subgenre. It starts with a superslick title sequence, has neat directorial flourish from director Michael Vaughan,offers a fine cast, and keeps up some good patter until it finally gets too convoluted for its own good. No sympathetic involvement with the characters stalls it out, too, so it ends up as mostly an exercise in style. Fair enough.

Daniel Craig handled himself so well here that he was picked up for the Bond franchise. Colm Meaney,Michael Gambon and Tom Hardy are positioned among the quip-heavy, mercy-shy ‘layers’ of society’s crime confection, along with the great Sally Hawkins as a murderous nutcase and the uber-sexy Sienna Miller as someone uber-sexy.
Movie made $12,000,000, has a loyal cult following. According to the cuss-collectors over at International Movie Data Base, the cast employ the go-to word that describes copulation a total of 201 times.
