Layer Cake
Short description
Layer Cake follows a London cocaine dealer known only as XXXX, who has made enough money from the trade to want out. Before his boss Jimmy Price will let him walk away, he asks two final favours: track down the missing daughter of a powerful criminal associate, and broker the sale of a large shipment of ecstasy with a volatile gangster named Duke. The second job turns out to be more complicated than it looks, drawing XXXX into a dispute over the drugs and into a tangle of deception and shifting loyalties that threatens both his retirement plans and his life.
The film is Matthew Vaughn's first as director, after his earlier work as a producer, and it was adapted by J.J. Connolly from his own novel. Daniel Craig leads the cast as XXXX, with Sienna Miller, Tom Hardy, Colm Meaney, George Harris and Sally Hawkins among the supporting players. Made for a modest budget of around 7 million dollars, it took roughly 12 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.2 from about 207,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.9 from around 2,500 votes. The critics' rating stands at 7.2 from 141 reviews, closely matching the larger audience score. Vaughn went on to direct Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and the Kingsman films.
What's left behind the scenes
- The preliminary script was 408 pages long, while the book it was based on was 344 pages long (the page format is not specified).
- Originally, Sony Pictures intended for the film to end with the protagonist (Mr.XXXX) riding off into the sunset alive and well with his girlfriend. However, Matthew Vaughn shot an alternative ending, which ultimately made it into the film.
- In the final scene, Sydney shoots Mr. XXXX as he stands looking back over his right shoulder (left shoulder forward). At the same time, Tammi reacts to the shot by looking straight ahead. And a few frames later, we see Sydney approaching the man lying in front of him. From this position, Sydney could not have hit the chest of a person turned to the right; he should have been to the right of Mr. XXXX, and therefore should have approached from the right side after the shot.
- The film is based on J.J. Connolly's novel 'Layer Cake' (2000).
- The word 'fuck' and its derivatives are uttered 201 times in the film.
- The warehouse where (towards the end of the film) the main character meets Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon) is the largest warehouse of its kind in all of Britain. It was almost empty, and most of the boxes were 'drawn in' on a computer.
- The wax head of Jamie Foreman, presented to us severed, is the same head that was used in the film "Elizabeth" (1998), where Foreman's character also lost his head.
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