In too deep..

Treating cocaine and ecstasy like any other commodities, he has made a fortune for himself without ever really getting his hands dirty or losing his anonymity. Now, he's looking at retiring while he's still young enough to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.

He reckons a couple of days should see him clear of the business. That's the plan, anyway. But like all the best laid plans it goes somewhat astray...

Crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) wants a couple of favours from him. The drug addict daughter of powerful criminal Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon) has gone missing and Price wants her tracked down. Sounds simple enough.

So does Price's second favour: a wild-cannon crook named The Duke (Jamie Foreman) has got hold of a huge shipment of ecstasy. Price needs a middle man to sort out a deal to buy the drugs.

Two last jobs, thinks our hero, and then I'm free. But nothing's ever simple. With a renegade Serbian war lord thrown into the equation and a host of dangerous lowlifes out to help and hinder him, he soon realises that getting out of the drugs business just might cost him everything. Including his life.

"Layer Cake is a metaphor for different levels of British society, whether it's the crime world or anything else", says first-time director Matthew Vaughn, producer of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

"The movie's about showing how drugs are everywhere and it doesn't matter who or where you are, you're only one person away from drugs, scoring drugs or being involved with criminals. There's a speech at the end of the film where someone uses Layer Cake as a metaphor for life and how you go up and up and up from one layer of the cake and to the next."

Liverpool-born actor Daniel Craig brings a blend of charisma and intelligence to the central role - a character known only as XXXX.

"Daniel played the character almost like a dude from a Clint Eastwood movie," says scriptwriter J.J. Connolly.

"No name, no back-story, no clues, no signifiers as to where he's from, and that takes great courage from an actor because usually they want to know every little thing about a character. Daniel plays the character without any clutter."

"It seemed to me," says Daniel Craig, "that he was a very normal man doing a very unusual job. The old idea of criminals and drug dealers is not the way that these people do business anymore. They do business like business people do business. They look the same way as stockbrokers. They speak the same way. Their commodity happens to be cocaine but as far as my character's concerned it's no worse than selling stocks and shares in the city."

It's less of a gangster movie and more of a crime movie," Craig continues.

"It really does go against the grain as far as gangster movies are concerned. I've had quite a few scripts thrown at me about British gangster movies and they've never appealed to me because ultimately you're standing round in shark suits with sawn off shotguns going, Come on, you slags!' There is some of that in the movie but it's only part of a bigger picture."

Playing XXXX's boss Jimmy Price is veteran British actor Kenneth Cranham. "XXXX's character thinks that Jimmy is the proper stuff, the big cheese," says Cranham.

"But as the film progresses Jimmy is actually shown to be quite low down on the list."

One of the things that attracted Cranham to the part was the chance to work with Michael Gambon, who plays Eddie Temple, the more successful mobster that Jimmy envies.

"Mike Gambon and I are the two gangsters in the piece. We've known each other since the mid sixties, but this is the first time that we've worked together. When they knew they'd got the two of us they wrote us a short scene together which wasn't in the original script which I think is very funny."

Getting Gambon to play Eddie Temple was a bit of a coup for the filmmakers. "He's playing in Harry Potter at the moment so we had to get him out of there for a few days," laughs Adam Bohling.

Eddie Temple couldn't be further from Harry Potter's cuddly Dumbledore though.

"Eddie's a very nice crook," says Gambon. "He's civilised, he's gone upmarket. He goes to the opera, he speaks a bit better than he used to, he's married a posh bird and they live in a big Georgian house in London. And he's done well, he's laundered his money and he's very rich but really he's still a killer deep down."

Sienna Miller plays Craig's love interest. "She's fun," says Miller about her character. "Part of me was very nervous about playing someone who is that obviously sexual and slightly tarty but once I got on set, all of those worries disappeared because it was such a laugh."