Layer Cake

There's nothing pretty about the British drug underworld—or the British, for that matter—yet Layer Cake had us craving more of both in this ultra-stylized gangster flick. The ensemble cast, led by Daniel Craig, sprints through plot twists, botched deals, and shootouts, and if you're still lost when all the dust settles, a nice complement of extras clears up any loose ends. A brisk "Making of" featurette moves at the same pace as the movie, while introducing each of the cast's members against a backdrop of their clips. A post-screening Q&A with Craig and director Matthew Vaughn mixes talk of adapting the movie from a book and working on a small budget with a handful of questions from gawking movie freaks in the audience. A commentary track with Vaughn and screenwriter J.J. Connolly is next, but the two supply bland facts on shooting schedules and camera tricks in such a monotone drone, you're better off watching the movie again without them. Finally, two studio-mandated alternate endings that were luckily cut find their way into the deleted scenes, both of which would've undermined Cake's credibility worse than a Brit with straight teeth.