LAYER CAKE (15)

IT'S been at least a week since the latest gang of dodgy, double-dealing East End geezers swaggered into our multiplexes.

So it comes as no surprise that Matthew Vaughn, producer of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels - the film that ignited the trend - should make his feature film directing debut with Layer Cake.

Smooth-talking, dapper drug dealer X (Daniel Craig) poses as a legitimate businessman to run his lucrative operation, in the hope of one day retiring from his life of crime.

He sees his opportunity to slip silently into the shadows when heavyweight crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) hires him to locate the drug addict daughter of all-powerful crime boss, Eddie Ryder (Michael Gambon).

X eagerly accepts the job as a simple way to make some easy money and get out of the game.

He also agrees to perform a second favour for Jimmy: to act as a middleman for a huge shipment of ecstasy from small-time criminal Duke (Jamie Forman).

Little does X realise that Duke acquired the drugs by ripping off an Amsterdam drugs cartel.

Then there is the small problem of a renegade Serbian warlord and a sexy blonde called Tammy (Sienna Miller), who sets X's pulse racing.

Getting out of the drugs business without incurring the wrath of Jimmy's softly spoken right-hand man, Gene (Colm Meaney), might be more perilous than X first thought.

Layer Cake delves into London's criminal underbelly as many films - most notably Guy Richie's Lock, Stock - have done before.

But this time the whole tone is different. Instead of the brash, street-smart lads of earlier films we have a more measured production and Vaughn's direction is crisp and uncluttered.

Craig also stands head and shoulders above the rest as the leading man. The promise of his earlier films finally comes to fruition and he gives us not just another hoodlum trying to go straight, but a more complex individual with dreams of his own.

If there are any quibbles, they come with the somewhat unsatisfying ending, but that does not detract from the fact that this is one of the classiest films to come out of Britain this year.