Layer Cake : Blu-ray Review

The Movie Itself is the directorial debut from Matthew Vaughn, and it fits snuggly into the same vein as Vaughn’s previous producing-only works, Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Immediately from the start, Layer Cake aims to differentiate itself from any drug dealing/organized crime film that’s been borne of the London film scene in the past decade. Our hero, or perhaps an anti-hero — given his trade and disposition — is looking to get out of the drug business despite his competency and success. Where the film differs, is the way in which it portrays the London-based drug scene. Everything is ultra-chic, sterile, and at many times, beautiful — compare this to say, Traffic or American Gangster, and you’ll see precisely what I mean.

Too often it’s greed or ambition (ala Scarface) that leads to the demise of the protagonists in movies such as these, and thankfully Layer Cake decides instead to imbue the lead character with this insight. However, despite his foreknowledge, the leading man, Mr. X (Daniel Craig, Casino Royale) agrees to undertake two final tasks before popping off for good — neither of which ultimately go quite as smoothly as planned.

With one million pills of Ecstasy up for grabs, Mr. X is ordered by his superior, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham, Hot Fuzz) to not only negotiate the sale of the stolen pills, but also to locate the daughter of a fellow friend and crime lord, Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). As you might expect, the original owner of the pills — a Serbian drug lord — isn’t tickled with the prospect of losing his investment, and he dispatches a killer to retrieve the pills and the heads of any involved parties. As if things weren’t complicated enough for our beloved Mr. X at this point, simply tack on a series of double-crosses and betrayals and you’ve got yourself a delectable recipe for your very own “Layer Cake”, where everyone wants a piece, and they’re willing to do nearly anything to get it.

I was thoroughly impressed when I finally got a chance to sit down to watching Layer Cake, back in early 2006. It has since become one of my all-time favorite British films, even outmatching Vaughn and Guy Ritchie’s masterworks, Snatch and Lock Stock. Many would argue against that, but I truly feel that Layer Cake masters the balance of style and substance. Vaughn himself admits in the supplied Q&A that he aspired to make a film with a grander, more beautiful view of London and its surrounding areas — his main inspiration (visually anyway) being Michael Mann’s crime epic, Heat. I had always felt that Mann did a fantastic job encapsulating Los Angeles in a unique and stunning fashion, and as confirmed by Vaughn, he too shares the same sentiment. Another area where Layer Cake differs from it’s spiritual predecessors is its narrative origins. Originally written as a novel by J.J. Connolly, and here adapted for the screen by the very same author, the story unfolds as smoothly and deftly as the seamless transitions on the screen. To be sure, Vaughn revisits many of the devices (both visual and editing) that he may have gleaned from Ritchie, but it’s in my humble opinion that Vaughn has refined all of them to the point of perfection, and in many ways the film benefits from a certain sense of maturity that is lacking in Vaughn’s previous works.

All of these things, combined with a stellar cast, and a major breakthrough role for Craig — that undoubtedly secured him his “00″ status — ultimately give this film the edge over the countless gangster thriller entries of recent memory. For that reason alone, you should give Layer Cake a rent, but there is so much more — as you’ll see below — that should warrant a “blind buy”, assuming you’re into movies such as this.

The Replacement Killers : Blu-ray Disc Review

The Movie Itself centers around hitman, John Lee (Chow Yun-Fat) who is contractually obligated to a ruthless Chinese kingpin, Terence Wei (Kenneth Tsang), for a maximum of three “hits” of Wei’s choosing. Upon the death of Mr. Wei’s son, at the hands of a vengeful cop (Michael Rooker), he tasks John with the disposal of the cop’s very own son.

Fortunately for the son and his family, John’s temperament is equal parts hitman and monk — favoring the latter when it comes to whacking innocent children (go figure, right?). Understandably, John’s betrayal is not taken lightly by his-now-former employer, and his family in China soon becomes Wei’s next target. To make matters worse, Wei’s influence throughout the city is far-reaching, which makes John’s impromptu flight to China all the more difficult. Enlisting the help of a tough-as-nails — and gorgeous — document forger, Meg Coburn (Mira Sorvino), he grows ever closer to his goal of reaching his family in China before a terrible fate befalls them. However, when John’s “replacements” arrive on the scene, he must ultimately make a choice to save the boy from the new hired guns, or protect the lives of his loved ones instead.

The film is directed by Antoine Fuqua (”Training Day“, “Shooter“) and serves both as his directorial debut and actor, Chow Yun-Fat’s debut in Hollywood. Yun-Fat is a veritable Hong Kong film god for his stylistic-shooter films, many of his best under the direction of legendary action director John Woo. Needless to say, expectations were staggeringly high for Chow Yun-Fat’s first Hollywood movie, and in many ways Yun-Fat delivers — doing what he does best — but it’s the script that ultimately sells the film short. Granted, this was Yun-Fat’s first English speaking role, and as they go on to mention in the brief “behind-the-scenes” featurette, much of the original script had to be re-written because he wasn’t capable of delivering his lines fluently in English. Therefore, his character was re-tooled into more of the “strong silent type” which ultimately affects the film’s ability to resonate beyond the typical shoot-em-up actioner.

I get the sense that this “extended edition” was created with the explicit intent of improving our connections with both John and Meg. Sadly, though, it truly amounts to nothing more than a couple of mediocre deleted/extended scenes that do little in helping to flesh out the otherwise hollow characters. Sorvino and Yun-Fat do the absolute best they can with the material given to them, but at the end of the day, the film is precisely what you should expect from it — a whole lot of bullets and balletic gun play that is performed by Hong Kong’s greatest film asset, Chow Yun-Fat. The Killer or Hard Boiled it is not, but The Replacement Killers still musters enough gusto to make a name for itself, and earn a place in history as one of the better Hollywood actioners, even if it doesn’t possesses the heart and soul it so desperately seeks and preaches.