Layer Cake

Daniel Craig in his pre-James Bond days playing this mostly calm and orderly middleman in the cocaine trade. He figures to make his money, then get out, but finds that more difficult than he expected.

This is very much one of those crime movies with a lot of layers that are supposed to interlock and overlap. Craig's character (who is never named) and his small crew end up in trouble because this other idiot threw their names around when he went to Amsterdam and stole a lot of Ecstasy pills from some very angry Serbians. One of the guys Craig works for, Jimmy Price, has tasked him to locate an old friend's (played by Michael Gambon) missing, heroin-addicted daughter. There's an entire subplot involving the death of a major drug dealer from the 1970s named Crazy Larry, which involves at least three other characters running around in the present. There's even a bit where Craig meets a woman named Tammy inadverdently through the inept nephew of the jackass that stole all the pills that factors in.

The movie tries too hard on that account, though, because some of the threads feel superfluous. The one about Crazy Larry in particular is meant to illustrate a point, but I think the rest of the movie was handling it just fine.

I like the obvious lesson that to a certain extent making plans can be futile. Because people with power over you will change the rules whenever they feel like it, if it suits their purpose. Craig has no skills whatsoever towards finding a missing person, but Jimmy Price has power, so if he says do it, Craig has to try. Craig can have an agreement with Michael Gambon, but Gambon has more power so he can alter the deal as he sees fit, or so he thinks.

(Gambon gives this lovely spiel about how life is about starting at the bottom and eating a lot of shit, then gradually climbing higher and eating less shit, until you reach the point you don't even recall what it smells like. He's doing it to lord his position over Craig, but there's an obvious part of it he forgets that comes back to bite him I rather enjoyed.)

Most of the big surprises or reveals you can see coming pretty easily, but they mostly work with the story, so they're still effective. It has a few parts I laughed at, and some good performances. A solid crime movie, basically.