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Lock stock and two smoking
snatches. Yeah, you heard me, bloke! This whole Brit gangster movie
has become a bloody genre. The nice part is that it's a genre that
doesn't take itself too seriously--but is just a little too formulaic
for its own good. First you take a reluctant anti-hero whose main
goal in life is to just make it through the day alive. He is most
likely a career criminal who is looking to do one last job and make
a clean break of it. He's generally not a horrible person, but has
most likely led a life that is less than exemplary, and has caused
pain for at least a few people (in this case dealing lots and lots
of coke). As with Layer Cake, he spends the movie getting
his ass handed to him. He is surrounded by thugs and one suave kingpin
type on whose whim his fate lies. There is a peripheral cast of wacky
characters, which usually involves an ambiguously gay thug duo who,
if they weren't so dumb, would understand that they were perfect for
each other. There's one crazy dude with no conscious who will just
kill at the drop of a hat, and, of course, the femme fatale, who is
usually involved with the kingpin dude. Chicks. They're always our
hero's undoing. While I could be talking about any number of movies
here, including the aforementioned and something like Sexy
Beast or even The
Transporter, these principals and plot points could equally
be applied to Layer Cake. Often there is a bit of humor thrown
in, albeit oddball British humor (which is what really differentiates
these films from their counterparts). Sure, you have stuff like Get
Shorty, The
Whole Nine Yards, Lucky
Number Slevin and even Miller's
Crossing, but they are missing that particular Brit thing
that makes a movie like Layer Cake so very British. Maybe
it's the addition of all those Guy
Ritchie crazy zoom shots and voice-over flashbacks (which I'm
a total sucker for), but the thing just has characters above and beyond
the American gangster twist comedy. That's not to say that the plot
wasn't a little muddled. And it is fun watching the future James Bond
get his ass kicked. He's kind of an odd looking guy--it's almost as
if they've colorized his eyeballs blue. I'm not sure how that's all
going to work out. Maybe if he had asked the producers to actually
give his character a name, he wouldn't have blended into the woodwork
as much as he did. In fact, the lead character, in his controlled
actions, was one of the most vanilla and least interesting. This is
actually common for these films as well, as the lead kind of flies
under the radar, and occasionally takes a beating, while all the loud-mouths
and lunatics swirl around him. I'm not sure if it's the accents or
the fact that each version of this kind of film needs to add more
twists and turns than the last (and not repeat any), but there were
times where I got a little lost about who was screwing whom and why.
At the end it all came together, and thankfully ended in a non-Hollywood
kind of way. The DVD showed a couple alternative endings, but they
definitely picked the right one. Anyhow this is like one of the worst
reviews I've ever written, but rest assured that I actually did like
it. [DVD]
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