Layer Cake (2004)

Brit crime thriller starring Daniel Craig as a drug dealer who – just as he’s about to retire – becomes wrapped up in a dangerous world of gangsters. 

It’s highly stylised, but oddly unsatisfying. The twists and turns of the plot are difficult to follow. And some parts seem clichéd, such as the Scorsese-lite touch of using “Gimme Shelter” on the soundtrack. It’s violent and nasty, too. 

Michael Gambon is an impressively horrid villain, and Daniel Craig is always watchable, but there’s a shallowness that makes it hard to like. It aims for “gritty” but only achieves “depressing”.

Edge of Love (2008)

Fairly compelling drama set during World War II. When young Welsh singer Vera (Keira Knightley) meets her old friend Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), their youthful attraction is rekindled. But Thomas is now married to Caitlin (Sienna Miller), and Vera is courted by a soldier (Cillian Murphy) soon to be sent back into battle.

The film wisely keeps its focus on the relationship between the two women, the real subject of the story, with the famous poet creating both a bond and a tension between them. Unlike Sylvia and Iris, it’s certainly not a writer biopic.

Knightley’s Welsh accent is surprisingly convincing, although people from Wales might not agree. Her singing is credible, too. She’s charismatic, as is Murphy as her troubled lover, psychologically damaged by the war. Sienna Miller is also impressive, communicating a huge range of emotions with subtle grace. Rhys, meanwhile, struggles somewhat to convey the magnetism that the plot needs to hinge upon. Poetry aside, exactly what was it that these two women loved so much about him?

The film is occasionally a little over-stylised and there are some unrealistic moments (a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral amid bomb wreckage just looked like a painting), but it’s never predictable and it makes you fully engage with all four of the main characters. In terms of mood and tone it flits oddly all over the place, but I rather like that.

There are cameos by Suggs of Madness and Lisa Stansfield.

Keira Knightley’s mother wrote the screenplay.

An incredible number of cigarettes are smoked.

It’s not clear why it’s called Edge of Love – a title that would work for almost any film with a romantic storyline.

American Sniper (2014)

Powerful and disturbing Iraq War drama that tells the story of “the most lethal sniper in US military history”. Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle, who becomes more and more damaged by each of his four tours of duty. Sienna Miller plays his wife (and mother of his children), seeing the man she loves ruined by post-traumatic stress disorder.

It’s violent and bloody as you’d expect from a film with this title and subject matter. I was surprised it was only a “15” given that you see children being shot and some other very harrowing images.

Director/producer Clint Eastwood has it both ways in the sense that he shows the evils of war and senseless brutality of violence but simultaneously documents a culture that fails to learn from its mistakes and continues to celebrate the use and ownership of guns. In Trump’s America it seems more relevant than ever.