In Manhattan, the British limousine driver Alfie (Jude Law) is surrounded by beautiful women, most of them clients, and he lives as a Don Juan, having one night stands with all of them and without any sort of commitment. His girl-friend and single-mother Julie (Marisa Tomei) is quite upset with the situation and his best friends are his colleague Marlon (Omar Epps) and his girl-friend Lonette (Nia Long). Alfie has a brief affair with Lonette, and the consequences of his act forces Alfie to reflect and wonder about his life style.

As deeply cool and urbane as its unnamed hero, LAYER CAKE follows the precise, articulate XXXX (Daniel Craig) as he manoeuvres through what he intends to be his last business deal in modern-day London. His business…Drugs. On the cusp of turning 30, XXXX has amassed a personal fortune, deftly avoiding the violence and ugliness so many others in his trade fall prey to by following a strict personal code defined by discretion and clean detachment from the products he sells. Just as XXXX is poised to cash in and get out, Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), the top layer of this particular underworld cake, hands down two tasks: find Eddie Temple’s (Michael Gambon) drug-addicted daughter, and unload a mass of ecstasy stolen in Amsterdam by the sloppy, loud Duke (Jamie Foreman), who is exactly the type of wannabe gangster that XXXX has spent his career avoiding. Further complicating matters is Tammy (Sienna Miller), a sexy young blond who XXXX meets in a club and can’t get off his mind.