A gangster film starring Daniel Craig and Tom Hardy has just found a new streaming home in the UK.
Written by J.J. Connell, who adapts his own 2000 novel of the same name, Layer Cake is set in the criminal underworld of London.
Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn is behind the camera for the 2004 movie, which sees Craig play an unnamed cocaine distributor who’s adverse to violence and operates his venture like a legitimate business.
Vaughn’s directorial debut is now available to watch on Prime Video in the UK. The streamer also features some of the filmmaker’s other work, including Stardust, Kingsman: The Secret Service and its two follow-ups, Kingsman: The Golden Circle and The King’s Man.
Hailed as a “classic gangster saga” by The Washington Post, Layer Cake follows Craig’s protagonist as he’s ready to retire from a life of crime. Shortly before he can hang his gun, he’s summoned by his boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), who has two missions for him.
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First off, the lead has to find Charlie (Nathalie Lunghi), the drug-addicted daughter of one of Jimmy’s associates. Secondly, he’s tasked with overseeing a big buy of ecstasy pills from shady, low-level criminal, the Duke (Jamie Foreman).
Layer Cake also stars Hardy as Clarkie, while Sienna Miller plays Tammy and Ben Whishaw appears in the role of Sidney.
The film is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, where it has a rating of 81% out of 141 reviews.
The Washington Post called it a “stylish” film about “the clashing of rival empires”, while the London Evening Standard praised the “uniformly excellent” cast, the script and Vaughn’s direction for enhancing the twisty genre.
“Layer Cake features all the doublecrosses, grasses and reversals of fortune that come as standard to the genre, but it is lifted by the uniformly excellent cast, the snide intelligence of the script, and the effortless pace of Vaughn’s direction,” the review read.
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Variety also pointed out how the caste-like system depicted in the film, hence the title, has some degree of “believability”.
“There’s a proper lived-in believability about Layer Cake’s depiction of how the worlds of the rich, the criminal and the criminally rich intersect,” their review noted.
Craig is currently in cinemas with Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie where he reprises the role of detective Benoit Blanc.
Layer Cake is streaming on Prime Video in the UK.
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