Mr. Nice (2010)

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  January 4, 2012

  SirPant

  From what I gather, this film doesn't come close to achieving what a faithful adaptation should. I've not read the book but I've heard good things but I'm very familiar with
  
  Howard Marks's story, manner and humour. He's quite a cool character in my book and I thought Rhys Ifa... read morens did him justice. I enjoyed the film although I'm a little frustrated with myself that I didn't read the book first. I did get the impression that a lot was skipped over though, years passed without mention etc but getting a film adaptation of someones life is always a struggle, for what its worth I though the film was entertaining and enjoyable with a great cast.

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  December 8, 2011

  LorenzoVonMatterhorn

  "43 Aliases. 89 Phone Lines. This is the Story of Howard Marks."
  
  Based on the hugely successful autobiography of the same name, Mr. Nice tells the incredible story of the life of Howard Marks, "the world's most sophisticated drug smuggler."
  
  ... read moreentury Schoolbook">REVIEW
  Rhys Ifans plays Howard Marks in a movie based around the Welsh drug dealer's biography. We go from Marks' entry to Oxford (where he first discovered the delights of smoking dope) to his brief brush with conventionality, followed by his first occasion of importing a Mercedes full of cannabis, his association with IRA gunman and drug importer Jim McCann (David Thewlis), and assorted escapades, brushes with the law, assumed identities and so on. Throughout all this he continues to father additional children with long suffering partner/wife Judy (Chloe Sevigny), and he appears to be a good father, loving and loved.
  
  What to make of this? Well, it always holds the interest, it is well acted by all involved (albeit Sevigny's role is pretty thankless), and much of it has a reasonable sense of period (in particular, Ifans is inserted into period newsreel footage with mixed results), with some good use of period music (John Lennon's "God" is particularly well placed). It is sometimes amusing, seldom gripping, and be non-judgemental - Marks' exploits are presented to us and we are left to come to our own conclusions as to how right or wrong he was.
  
  The illegality of his actions is not condemned: however, although there are several points where one gets the feeling that the filmmakers' sympathies lie with the legalising marijuana lobby, it is difficult not to take on board the drastic consequences for Marks and his family when he is apprehended and the excuses no longer work. I ended up being as morally compromised as the movie - it was a worthwhile exercise to make the film, I think, but I am no wiser as to where Marks would stand if we were all to line up and be judged. And maybe that is how it should be.

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  November 7, 2010

  mumby1988

  Western cinema is often accused of presenting a 'Hollywood version' of reality, glamorising the gritty and turning the important into the frivolous. While the truth of this statement varies from film to film, there are two subjects which have been unduly 'Hollywood-ised' more tha... read moren any other: drugs and pornography. For every Boogie Nights, there are a dozen films like The Moguls and I Want Candy which have little or no credibility with regard to their subject matter. And for every Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, you'll get a dozen films like Mr. Nice.
  
  Bernard Rose's take on the autobiography of drug baron Howard Marks should have made for quite an interesting film. Quite apart from his prolific career running hashish to Britain and the US, Marks was apparently approached to spy for MI6 and got himself involved in the dark dealings of the IRA. But as Marks' remarkable story plays out, you find yourself becoming slowly disconnected from what is happening, becoming frustrated by the performances and the film's opinion of this Welsh rogue.
  
  On the good side, Mr. Nice has some interesting visual touches which set it apart from the likes of Blow and Alpha Dog. Rose has always been a strong visual artist, and in this he uses digital technology to insert the characters into stock footage of Britain in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This practice may be relatively common, but it's done so seamlessly that you can't help wondering whether it was done digitally, or whether Rose managed to find a few lost corners of London and then shoot them on deliberately degraded stock. In an added twist, the central character remains roughly the same age throughout - we see him inhabiting his past selves in the classroom and playground, in the manner of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
  
  There are also a number of moments in which the comedy works, the best of these being where Marks is stopped by customs and his car is taken apart to be searched. After a bit of banter with the customs officers, Marks looks around as it emerges that they won't find any hashish in the lining of his car. He makes eye contact with an elderly lady who is waved through; she tips her passport to him, and we realise where the stuff is really hiding. Scenes like this and the confusing codenames for the drugs are pleasant, knowing riffs on The French Connection and its successors.
  
  The structure of Mr. Nice is not that of a standard biopic. It may proceed in a linear fashion, beginning with Marks winning a place at Oxford and ending up with his release from prison, but it doesn't feel like a straightforward adaptation of a memoir. Like the recent Ian Dury biopic, Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, Mr. Nice is told in more of a cabaret style, a collection of anecdotes and fragments from an insanely eventful life. The film is bookended by Marks walking out on stage at an unnamed theatre to do a gig, and asking: "Are there any plain-clothed policeman in tonight?"
  
  But it is here, in this device, that the flaws with the film begin to come to the surface. Even as biopics go, Mr. Nice is massively hagiographic, relying so heavily on the charm of the central character that the second our sympathy wavers we never properly settle back into the story. Regardless of how he was in real life, the Howard Marks presented in Mr. Nice is a lovable rogue, whose involvement in drugs began almost by accident and whose career was apparently motivated by little more than wanting to provide for his loved ones.
  
  Having the cabaret set-up gives the distinct impression that the version of events that we are seeing has been cleverly rehearsed. Like a stand-up comic perfecting his routine, Marks talks up the bits that get our sympathy, glosses over the ones that don't and always goes for a laugh over something more shocking or substantial. What we are seeing is a character, not the man himself, just as Peter Sellers would constantly slip into different characters while being interviewed. The difference is that Sellers genuinely didn't know who he was: the fact that the act was not voluntary made him emotionally compelling. Marks, meanwhile, knows full well who he is but is reluctant to tell you anything. By keeping his cards so close to his chest, he puts up a barrier between us and him, and eventually we give up trying to understand him.
  
  The film merits a very unflattering comparison with Notorious, the biopic of rapper Notorious B.I.G. (as opposed to the Alfred Hitchcock film). Both films focus on characters with some involvement in drugs, but present them as being so bizarrely innocent and unfortunate that they became little more than pantomime caricatures of 'good citizens'. The problem is not that the real life Howard Marks or Biggie Smalls weren't perhaps victims of circumstance - the problem is that the film conveys this in such a suspect way, that we start to question the credibility of their story.
  
  The film's biggest failure, like Notorious, is that it fails to present a solid moral case, one way or the other. There are numerous lines where Marks complains that "the law is wrong" and that cannabis shouldn't be illegal. And the film doesn't entirely demonise the police as being backward, uptight, sexually-repressed fascists, who want to take the country back to the days of wartime discipline. But this viewpoint is never properly developed into a coherent case. Most of the time the film is a carefree romp full of people rolling around getting stoned and having sex; perhaps a more fitting title would have been Carry On Dealing.
  
  This light-hearted tone becomes so overbearing that it prevents the film from being dark enough when it really needs to be. The scenes of Marks hitting rock bottom in prison, getting shingles and having his teeth pulled out, are shot in the same gruesome, full-on style that worked so well on Candyman. But they feel tacked-on, like Rose had forgotten to show the downside to Marks' lifestyle and was attempting to cut his losses. Even the scene where Marks is about to be kneecapped by an IRA gunman is poorly done: it's briefly tense, but it then transpires it was all a joke, and everyone walks away laughing, except for us.
  
  The performances are also a complete mixed bag. Rhys Ifans can be a good actor - think of his performance as Peter Cook in the TV film Not Only, But Always. But his performance as Howard Marks, as a Welsh, womanising vagabond who enjoys a smoke and a drink, is not that much of a stretch. Chloe Sevigny's character is very underwritten: she spends most of her time telling Ifans to stop dealing drugs, and yet she never has the courage to leave him. On the up side, Christian McKay is very good as the MI6 operative, and Crispin Glover makes the best he can of the American stoner. But the best performance, by a mile, is David Thewlis as crazed IRA operative Jim McCann. Despite a completely unnecessary shot of his member about an hour in, he dominates the screen, spitting venom and creating havoc wherever he goes.
  
  Mr. Nice is a deeply unsatisfying account of Howard Marks' life, which has little of interest to say about either the ethics of drugs or the elaborate means of transporting them. As Bill Bailey once said, marijuana and cogent political debate do not mix; every time the film attempts to get on a pedestal and say something meaningful, it collapses into an embarrassing, giggling heap. Rose has done a decent job with the visuals, and every time David Thewlis is on screen it's worth watching. But otherwise it's a biopic with no real purpose or direction, occasionally entertaining but always underwhelming.

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  September 21, 2012

  gator681

  As Howard Marks(Rhys Ifans) tells his rapt audience, his high intelligence allowed him to not only escape regular school beatings and rugby but also his depressed Welsh village. At Oxford University, he turns on, tunes in, and almost drops out before being given a second chance.... read more After that, he takes up a boring life of near poverty as a teacher with Ilze(Elsa Pataky). But then he gets a fateful phone call from his friend Graham(Jack Huston) from jail in Germany who wants him to do a small favor of driving a drug-filled car back to England. After this successful transit, Howard ponders a better distribution model. Enter James McCann(David Thewlis).
  
  "Mr. Nice" gets off to a good start in firmly establishing its protagonist's psychological motivations for actions in his future life.(Whether he confirms to colonial stereotypes or confounds them is a matter for another debate.) Stylistically, the movie seeks to be of the time it is set, first in black and white and then with a healthy amount of rear projection with spotty references that occasionally set the time like Bloody Sunday before going into the future at supersonic speeds on the Concorde as the characters seemingly never age. After all of that, as presented here, Howard Marks does not seem that remarkable for a drug smuggler, making him little deserving of a biopic. And the movie errs by not fully developing the more gonzo elements of the story like the IRA/MI6 connections that involve an atypically unhinged David Thewlis.

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  December 29, 2011

  panta2

  First a little warning: DO NOT WATCH A MOVIE IF YOU READ THE BOOK - YOU'LL BE DISSAPOINTED!
  
  Mr. Nice is a film about Howard Marks, a guy who was smart, then became smart ass, and finished as stupid drug smuggler... The screenplay was adapted by director Bernard Rose from Marks... read more' autobiography of the same name. He had interesting life... he was a man who improbably went from dealing a bit of dope at Oxford University to controlling an impressive 10% of the world's hashish trade, before doing time in prison.
  
  The real hero in this movie is Rhys Ifans who plays Marks! He looks utterly at ease in a role that provides a happy-go-lucky flipside to the more moving and melancholic slacker-type he embodied in the same year's Greenberg. But, after a while, like the drug whose values Marks extols, Bernard Rose's film just makes you slow paced... and lost in the story which was all over the place!
  
  Worth watching to see how easy is to deal drugs... :-)

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  May 22, 2011

  lesleyanorton

  Rambling story of the life and times of Mr Marks, dope dealer and gentleman and almost a British icon, as played by Rhys Ifans, fellow welshman. Amiably watchable.

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  October 8, 2010

  dketu

  It is nice. A mellow picture in 60's and later softdrugs dealing. Well filmed, scripted, acted creating the old day atmosphere. It slowly builds up and has a few surprises but nothing extreme or shocking, it creates an atmosphere as well as telling the story.
  People whom are re... read moresistant towards softdrugs or nudity will not like this movie.

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• Rhys Ifans as Howard Marks
• Chloë Sevigny as Judy Marks
• David Thewlis as Jim McCann
• Crispin Glover as Ernie Combs
• Luis Tosar as Craig Lovato
• Omid Djalili as Saleem Malik
• Jamie Harris as Patrick Lane
• Christian McKay as Hamilton McMillan
• Elsa Pataky as Ilze

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• • Lovato: I'm on the run, you see.
• • Howard Marks: Are you asking me to be a spy?

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• Mr. Nice (French)
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