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Layer Cake | 16446__lc_l
HAVING THEIR 'CAKE' Harris and Craig
Layer Cake: Daniel Smith

Credits

Rated: R; DVD Release Date: Aug 23, 2005; Genres: Action/Adventure, Crime; With: Daniel Craig and Colm Meaney; Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Those who know first-time director Matthew Vaughn's résumé — he produced Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch — might expect his own gangster entry to be full-tilt wacky. Instead, as the unnamed coke-dealing protagonist, Craig (Enduring Love), emphasizes in voice-over, this is an underworld where low-profile discretion is everything and flamboyance is deadly. It's smooth operators like Craig and his capped volcano of a middleman, Harris (Raiders of the Lost Ark's Katanga), who give Layer Cake its richness. EXTRAS The director's commentary with writer J.J. Connolly and a Q&A with Vaughn and Craig explain, among other things, how a little-indie-that-could managed to nab a Stones tune for its soundtrack and sweet-talk fashion label FCUK into lending its name for, incredibly, mock narcotics packaging. Meanwhile, you can practically picture Vaughn rolling his eyes as he notes in the deleted-scenes section, ''This is the wonderful ending that we were forced to film by Sony.'' Luckily, he prevailed: It's an egregious wimp-out that would have negated the story's deglamorizing parting shot.


Posted Aug 19, 2005
 

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