Although it is being sold as a spiritual successor to films like Lock Stock and Snatch, Layer Cake is noticeably different. Sure it’s another gangster film set in London with some quirky characters and the odd painful accent, but it plays it all a little differently. Rather than the super-stylised cinematics of the other films, Layer Cake is decidely less brash, eschewing huge amounts of flair for a supposedly more realistic feel (without going for the more gritty styling of American gangster films).
It doesn’t really matter though, as nothing of any great interest happens. The film plods along amiably and never really picks up. Worse, the last third is full of glaring holes, cliched dialogue (“The king is dead…”), an atrocious ending (enough to make people in the cinema laugh out loud at how bad it was – something I haven’t seen since the piss poor Jeepers Creepers), and a twists that are completely pointless. Why, for instance, did the main character have no name? There was a point to that device being used in Fight Club and Hero, but here it just seems to be because the author saw it used in screenwriting 101; it offers no extra value.
Poor.