Layer Cake features all the doublecrosses, grasses and reversals of fortune that come as standard to the genre, but it is lifted by the uniformly excellent cast, the snide intelligence of the script, and the effortless pace of Vaughn's direction.

There's a proper lived-in believability about Layer Cake's depiction of how the worlds of the rich, the criminal and the criminally rich intersect.

I like Layer Cake a lot.

It carries on for a bit too long, testing the limits of patience for this sort of stylized crime drama.