Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" remarked, "The movie was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who produced "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch", and this one works better than those films because it doesn't try so hard to be clever and tries harder to be menacing". Of Craig's performance, he said, "Craig is fascinating here as a criminal who is very smart, and finds that it is not an advantage because while you might be able to figure out what another smart person is about to do, dumbos like the men he works for are likely to do anything". He gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars. Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" remarked on the "efficient, gripping story" and wrote that Craig's performance as an improvising, "intelligent amateur" contained the "cool-yet-humble vibe of Steve McQueen". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave it a grade A, calling it a "Fast, convulsive, and densely exciting new British gangster thriller." Leslie Felperin of Variety wrote: "There's a proper lived-in believability about Layer Cake's depiction of how the worlds of the rich, the criminal and the criminally rich intersect."