Layer Cake

Color, R (mature themes, language, extreme violence, drug use, sexual situations, nudity), 106 min., DVD $26.98, VHS rental

DVD: director/screenwriter's commentary and Q&A;, featurette, alternate endings, storyboard comparisons, deleted scenes, music video

Street: Aug. 23, Prebook: July 21

First Run: L, May 2005, $2 mil.

Cast: Daniel Craig (The Jacket), Sienna Miller (Alfie), Michael Gambon (The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), Colm Meaney (Mystery, Alaska), Kenneth Cranham (The Boxer)

SONY

Easygoing London drug dealer XXXX (Craig) decides to abandon his life of crime after pulling off one last job. The problem is that the job entails doing favors for a Mob boss (Cranham), tracking down an associate's lost daughter and pulling off a scheme to sell 1 million hits of Ecstasy. For his directorial debut, Vaughn--the British producer of Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch--walks on turf similar to his other projects but delivers a film that's fresh and exciting at the same time. From the opening shot to the last, Vaughn offers a wildly stylish and wittily skewered take on the British crime scene that will appeal to fans of the aforementioned faves as well as vintage classics such as Get Carter. The old "one last job" plot is a familiar one, but Craig's star-making turn and the host of colorful and dangerous characters that populate the proceedings make this picture percolate. The quick theater-to-video window and good word-of-mouth will keep this summer release steadily moving into the fall.

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