Layer Cake Reviews
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Don't expect Layer Cake to add any new layers to the overstuffed genre of British gangster movies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Top CriticThe film is lamentably short of narrative coherence.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Shadows on the Wall
While it's visually striking, with superior acting, it's also cluttered with a bewildering collection of characters and plot threads.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Pointless and tasteless[!]
Full Review
| Original Score: C
What's abundantly clear is how far this kind of moviemaking has come from any knowledge of real criminal life; it's a geek's ineffectual daydream of mayhem.
As choices for a night's entertainment, well, you'd do better with a pint of Bass.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
A propulsive drug-world movie that dutifully covers similar ground in and around London: guns, chicks, inventive use of the F word, expensive-looking locations, designer stuff, and so on.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Cinema Signals
Craig scores, but difficult accents plus uneven cutting are as deadly as the drug trade.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
TheMovieChicks.com
Nice look, but there's more promise than delivered goods.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Reel Film Reviews
...a flat riff on a tired genre.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
tonymedley.com
Confusing...befuddling...too long. With a different script and a different director this might have worked...But, then, that would have been a completely different movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/10
Boulder Weekly
It's not that Vaughn bites off more than he can chew. It's that we've seen these unsavory characters so many times before that they've gone stale.
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)
It's occasionally taut and clever enough to hold audience attention, but ultimately has little substance to accompany its cool exterior.
Film Threat
As a whole, it just seems like we've seen it all before.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
L.A. Weekly
Like just about every British crime picture of the last decade, it's stacked with gentlemen gangsters in Saville Row suits, blockheaded yobs with names like Kinky, Tiptoes and the Duke, and a disposable caper scenario.
About.com
It doesn't seem to be making any point other than 'that's how we do violence in hip crime movies now.'
Los Angeles Daily News
Layer Cake doesn't offer much that we haven't seen before.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
One Guy's Opinion
Half-baked--astronomically high in cinematic calories but very low in nutritional value.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Contra Costa Times
Features a plot anyone over 16 has seen at least a dozen times, with slick but completely unoriginal directing by Matthew Vaughn.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
It's nice to look at, but lacks a sense of purpose.
| Original Score: 2/4
