History Film / LayerCake

* AnyoneCanDie

* BatmanGambit: Eddie banks on Mr. X's success of getting the pills off the Serbians so the two can make a drug deal for themselves. [[spoiler: X delivers, but Eddie holds his folks under gunpoint and withholds any payment for him. It turns out that X already foresees this and ambushes Eddie's transporters]]

* BinocularShot: Used for when XXXX and Mr Lucky are scoping out the area for the OvertRendezvous with Dragan.
* BlackAndGreyMorality

* BreakingTheFourthWall: A particularly twisted example. At the end of the movie, X turns around and tells the audience, "My name? If you knew that, you'd be as clever as me." [[spoiler: Because he turns around, he can't see that Sidney is coming to him with a gun.]]

--> [Gene's] listening to the geezer he was devoted to for twenty years [[spoiler:selling information Gene's told him in confidence to the police and not only that, belittling him, talking about him like he's a fuckin dog.

** In the book, a bunch of rejected sex toys for Mortimer's money-laundering porn shop become unexpectedly important when [[spoiler:the gang accidentally takes the boxes contains those sex toys to their drug deal with Eddie while leaving behind the boxes with the drugs. This allows them to recoup their losses when Eddie steals the boxes they brought to him at gunpoint.]] This is averted in the movie, where [[spoiler:the gang knows that Eddie will double-cross them from the start, bring the right boxes, and then have the Liverpool gang ambush Eddie's men as they take the drugs away.]]

* CurbStompBattle: Morty against Freddie, [[spoiler: for managing Morty 10 years inside and then asking for handouts for the first time they meet afterward]], and later Gene against [[spoiler: XXXX, for killing Jimmy Price]]. See ExtremeMeleeRevenge below.
* DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster: Deconstructed and then reconstructed by the end. At first XXXX proclaims his job to be an excellent method of employment with good retirement options. When he finally does end up facing the rest of the criminal underworld, however, they're all either idiots or terrifying cold-hearted thugs and all with their own flaws and quirks. [[spoiler: XXXX also finds out how much killing someone affects your conscience and peace of mind. In the end, however, the trope is at least partially reconstructed by Eddie Temple with an incredibly cool speech about the nature of the criminal game.]]
--> [[spoiler: You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son.]]

** [[spoiler: While surviving and leaving England in the book, the protagonist is implied to die in the movie]].

* DestroyTheEvidence: [[spoiler: XXXX [[FieryCoverup burns the clothes he was wearing to assassinate Jimmy]], but forgot to retrieve the cartridge case]].

* DiabolusExMachina: The end of the movie: [[spoiler: after winning at everything, he walks out of the club, prepared to ride off into the sunset with the girl, and is instantly shot to death by a minor character with no previously shown violent tendencies]]. And apparently, the test audiences ''[[FocusGroupEnding wanted it that way]]''.

* DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: Averted; it's treated as horrifying. Crazy Larry's treatment of men led to at least one man committing suicide and [[spoiler: to being killed by Gene, himself possibly a victim of Larry]].

* DrugsAreBad: Used very sparingly for a film based entirely around the drug business; the worst we see is stupid coked-up gansters and the death of Kinky from an overdose in his crackhouse. [[spoiler: And it turns out Kinky was deliberately spiked by Eddie Temple's "fixers".]]
* DrowningMySorrows: XXXX blitzes on pills and whisky [[spoiler: after killing Jimmy]]. Followed by a DrunkenMontage.
* ExtremeMeleeRevenge: Morty is quite ticked off with Freddie. Gene also begins to deliver one to [[spoiler: XXXX when he finds out he killed Jimmy Price]].

* {{Gayngster}}: Crazy Larry, who was also a DepravedHomosexual, who raped straight men and strangled the odd rent-boy. [[spoiler: Gene killed him with the rare gun mentioned below, as a sort of MercyKill because Larry was over the edge.]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: XXXX turns to the audience one last time in the finale to gloat about how clever he is, [[spoiler: which leaves him open for Sidney to shoot him.]]

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: During the taped conversation, Jimmy uses the word "dead darkies" when referring to Jamaicans. He also calls XXXX's accountant Mr Singh a "rag-'ead".
* PoorCommunicationKills: Narrowly avoided. [[spoiler: After XXXX kills Jimmy, Gene nearly beats him to death until Morty stops him long enough for XXXX to explain Jimmy was an informant. After being presented taped evidence by a bloodied XXXX, Gene sheepishly relents.]]

* PrettyLittleHeadshots: [[spoiler:The Duke's girlfriend]] receives an audience-friendly small entrance wound to her forehead. Applies also to both [[spoiler: Jimmy and Mr. Lucky]].

** [[spoiler: Inverted with the protagonist, in the film at least. XXXX hates guns and killing, and when he does assassinate Price it affects him so much afterwards that he can barely function for an indeterminately long montage of drinking, sedation, and hiding in his apartment watching TV and occasionally twitching.]]

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: After XXXX and his crew finally deliver the ecstasy pills to [[MagnificentBastard Eddie Temple]], all of them are rather surprised when the payment of three million pounds is replaced with [[spoiler: membership to a very exclusive gentleman's club]] and enforced at gunpoint. Eddie explains himself very frankly to XXXX in his office, before turning the ReasonYouSuckSpeech into a very memorable [[WeCanRuleTogether Welcome To The Business]] lecture:

* ScopeSnipe: Used against [[spoiler: Mr. Lucky]]. Triggers an OhCrap from XXXX.

* ShowerOfAngst: XXXX takes one after [[spoiler: he shoots Jimmy]].

* TookALevelInBadass: XXXX spends much of the film thinking he's in control and on the top of his game... only to be played by someone else further up the chain. After he [[spoiler: kills Jimmy]] he becomes a ''lot'' more ruthless and thorough.

* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler: XXXX, for most of the film, is being manipulated by either Jimmy or Eddie.]]

* VolatileSecondTierPosition: As members of the upper echelons of Jimmy's organization, XXXX, Gene and Morty all find themselves under pressure to keep their boss happy - including indulging some of his stranger requests. [[spoiler: It turns out XXXX is due to be sold to the cops, assuming Jimmy's plan to use him as a scapegoat in the kidnapping of Charlotte Temple doesn't end up getting him killed first; as Mr Troop's audio recording reveals, Jimmy is similarly dismissive of Gene and Morty.]]

* WhamShot: At the end, it's revealed that the ecstacy pills stolen by the Duke and his gang was only a fraction of the output produced by the Serbian operation, as their warehouse houses a full-scale industrial production room behind another door.

* XtremeKoolLetterz: The film was released as ''L4yer [=Cak3=]'' in the United States.
** And the UK DVD release too.

->''"You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son."''

* RelatedInTheAdaptation: Sidney is the Duke's nephew in the film but their just old friends in the book.

* GoryDiscretionShot: Blood splattered on some leafs indicating the headshot received by [[spoiler:Mr. Lucky]].

* RareGuns: The gun that XXXX borrows from Gene [[spoiler: and kills his boss with]] is an obscure Chinese military pistol, which makes it understandable that police were easily able to trace the gun and identify its use in an earlier murder.

-->'''XXXX''': ...and avoid, like the fucking plague, loud, attention-seeking, wannabe gangsters, in it for the glory, to be a face, to be a name. They don't mean to fuck up. They just do. (Cut to The Duke and his posse of half-wits swaggering through Amsterdam's Red Light District like they own the place, shortly before their fuck-up kicks off one of the many colliding plot threads.)

--> [Gene's] listening to the geezer he was devoted to for twenty years [[spoiler:selling information Gene's told him in confidence to [The police]] and not only that, belittling him, talking about him like he's a fuckin dog.

-->'''XXXX''': ...and avoid, like the fucking plague, loud, attention-seeking, wannabe gangsters, in it for the glory, to be a face, to be a name. They don't mean to fuck up. They just do. (DescriptionCut to The Duke and his posse of half-wits swaggering through Amsterdam's Red Light District like they own the place, shortly before their fuck-up kicks off one of the many colliding plot threads.)

-->'''XXXX'''': ...and avoid, like the fucking plague, loud, attention-seeking, wannabe gangsters, in it for the glory, to be a face, to be a name. They don't mean to fuck up. They just do.

* LaserGuidedKarma: XXXX bragging to the audience at the end about how careful and professional he is [[spoiler: distracts him long enough for Sidney to run up and shoot him.]]

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: The movie features approximately 30 named characters.

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: During the taped conversation, Jimmy uses the word "dead darkies" when referring to Jamaicans.

->''"You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake son."''

* SpotOfTea: Naturally, being a British film... but horrifically subverted. More pertinently, [[ImprovisedWeapon several litres of boiling liquid]].
-->'''Morty:''' But let's forget about all that. Let's have a cup of tea, Mr Hurst.

* FatAndSkinny: [[ThoseTwoBadGuys Liverpudlians Trevor and Shanks]]. Trevor is a big, laid-back black guy and Shanks is white, skinny and highly twitchy.

* [[StuffedIntoTheFridge Stuffed Into the Freezer]]: [[spoiler: The Duke]].

* BadassMustache: Jimmy and Gene's thug Mickey, the man who kills [[spoiler:The Duke and Slasher]], has a well-groomed mustache.

The star-studded cast features a plethora of British celebs, some of whom were already famous before this flick, and some having struck fame worldwide after the film, particularly [[Film/JamesBond our]] [[Film/CasinoRoyale2006 protagonist]].

''Layer Cake'' is a clever, character-driven take on the classic gangster flick, rounded out by a brief romance, {{black comedy}}, genuinely unexpected twists, and an overload of Britishisms.

''Layer Cake'' is a 2004 British crime film directed by Creator/MatthewVaughn, and [[TheFilmOfTheBook based on the 2000 novel of the same name]] by J.J. Connolly.

A not-so-legal London businessman (Creator/DanielCraig), planning for an early retirement, gets in slightly over his head during [[OneLastJob one final deal]]. [[FromBadToWorse Things quickly escalate]], until our protagonist gets double-crossed, loses control and, as they say across the pond, everything goes tits up.

The star-studded cast features a plethora of British celebs, some of whom were already famous before this flick, and some having struck fame worldwide after ''Layer Cake'', particularly [[Film/JamesBond our]] [[Film/CasinoRoyale2006 protagonist]].

The star-studded cast features a plethora of British celebs, some of whom were already famous before this flick, and some having struck fame state-side after ''Layer Cake'', particularly [[Film/CasinoRoyale2006 our protagonist]].

''Layer Cake'' is a 2004 British crime film directed by Creator/MatthewVaughn, and [[TheFilmOfTheBook based on a novel]] by J.J. Connolly.

The star-studded cast features a plethora of British celebs, some of whom were already famous before this flick, and some having struck fame state-side after ''Layer Cake'', particularly our [[Film/CasinoRoyale2006 protagonist]].

[[caption-width-right:300:''"I hate guns. And violence. But, as some Roman general once said. If you want peace, prepare for war."'']]