When a seemingly straight-forward drug deal goes awry, XXXX has to break his die-hard rules and turn up the heat, not only to outwit the old regime and come out on top, but to save his own skin...
23 Feb Layer Cake (2004)
Taking the Drugs
One narrative form is the con story. All of these folding tricks are there to engage the viewer, to trick him or her into investing in the story. The idea is that some important things you understand about the story, your platform for existence in the world you have entered, will change.
The representation is that they never were true, and that would be the case in the real world. But in the world of fiction this is a game you play with the writer for control over the causal dynamics of the world. You can win by besting him in creating the world, something that is allowed in the noir paradigm where the characters are at the mercy of dynamics created for our narrative needs. We know this is noir from the first few seconds with the narration and are reminded in the last few seconds where the character looks straight at you and says he is smarter than you.
That’s the form. All else is a matter of negotiation, and that largely is a balance of how radically the writer can shift while staying within the larger rules of the world. For instance, if we are shown that something was all a dream with no warning, we get frustrated. Everything has to be fair within the set of rules we agree to in the game; sometimes the on-screen ‘detective‘ is also a negotiator in the rules. Often, as here, he is on the side of the writer, playing the con.
I found this to be on the far end of acceptable in terms of the shifts. They were only a bit clever, and they cheated a bit too much.
The rules, you see, are inherited from the rules among crooks. So all the shifts come from us moving from one world of crook ethics to another: we have the calm, friendly business world of our hero, the chaotic world of some junior opportunists, the simple violence of Serbian drugmakers, and the inner world of the upper class club.
The film is episodic movements through these worlds, each one coloring not only what happens but how the rules of what happens shift. This is a gamble by the writer, one that barely works. But it is clever, so clever.
Posted in 2010
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
No Comments