Layer Cake has an extremely stylish opening sequence. First, the viewer is shown a mysterious dark screen which effectively zooms out to show the back of a van. Already we are given a few seconds of mystery as we wait to see what appears. Pretty soon after the scene first begins (what we presume is) the main character starts a monologue. When Daniel Craig ends his first paragraph of speech the viewer is suddenly shocked with an 'explosion' of white. As this happens the calm music also starts. Next we finally understand what is happening with this shot as a robbery is shown. This links to Craig's monologue when he ends with "cops and robbers".
Opening Sequence Part. 1
From a tracking shot the scene smoothly goes from one characters hair to another as if it was in the same scene (which it wasn't). We, the viewers, are given another bit of mystery as the shot begins with a close up on a characters face which then zooms out to reveal what is happening. A clever match-on-action then occurs as a women's legs walking down a hall almost seamlessly turns into an officers legs in a prison.
Throughout this Craig is continuing his cool, calm speech about the events unfolding in front of us. On screen we are then shown how the first two scenes are linked when the characters in the first and second scenes are together.
Another smart match-on-action shot occurs, we are seeing what looks like the camera going through the prison wall but ending up in a drugstore. When the tracking shot in this room begins the camera is close up to the products on the shelves to make sure the audience realises the details on screen without anyone having to directly explain it. Explaining it to the audience would take you out of the story. The main character in the monologue ends a sentence with "me", that's when we first see Craig's character walk onto this film. Again we are told this without being explained in detail who he is.
Next is when one of the best parts of the opening sequence starts. A fantastic, intelligent graphic match is produced as Craig's character's 'imagined' scene transitions to the shop in reality.
After that scene we are slowly beginning to piece together what type of person Daniel Craig's character is. At the start of the scene he says "I'm not a gangster, i'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine". The writers are trying to make us have some sort of bond to the character even though he seems to be a 'bad' guy. We are then introduced to another character, Craig's character explains to us how this man is a very intelligent student, again trying to give us a reason to support this man.
The director specifically creates a close up shot so we can see the five bags of cocaine, we find out why later... XXXX (as the main character is known outside of the film, since his name is not revealed(i dare you to try and figure it out)) discusses his "rules" to us, again using monologue. This gives the sense that this man is organised and knows what he is doing. A reverse zoom is used which takes us literally out of the window as a siren is heard. At this point the calm music (which has been going straight for almost 4 minutes) changes to a more tense and upbeat score. This adds a bit of thrill to the opening. Another great match-on-action manifests when a police car takes up from London to Amsterdam (helpfully shown with a subtitle) in a seamless scene. XXXX describes what seems like his 'enemy' when we are shown another completely different group of characters. Next we are taken back to XXXX and his friend, another close up is shown this time with seven boxes of cocaine. The filmmakers are showing us another of Craig's character's traits; his intelligence in the business. Later, we are shown a scene where XXXX hands out money to his friends, they don't bother checking the cash which tells us Daniel's character is a trustworthy guy.
Some shots later we are shown a character about to leave a room with the camera in the inside, this expertly transitions to Craig leaving the room when the camera switches to the outside. Once again the writers are trying to get you on the main character's side as XXXX explains that he owns a "legitimate business" which gives him an "honest income".
The opening ends with XXXX saying that he will be leaving the business soon. This is how it hooks the viewer. We know that things won't turn out as they are planned but we don't know how tings go wrong. The team behind Layer Cake have easily made you stay by writing this line, along with of course the many smooth camera shots and clever dialogue written throughout the past scenes.
