Mr. Nice (2011)

Howard Marks (Rhys Ifans) comes from Garw in Wales. He was the smartest kid in the coal mining region and gets beaten up for it. He gets into Oxford. One night, Ilze Kadegis (Elsa Pataky) crawls through his window and he follows her to a life of drugs. They get married and become teachers. The straight life doesn't last long. Ilze divorces him and he falls for Judy (Chloë Sevigny). When his friend Graham Plinson (Jack Huston) gets arrested in Germany, he goes over and helps transport a car filled with hashish. It's the start of a life of crime as he smuggles drugs from Afghanistan to Britain. He gets involved with IRA member Jim McCann (David Thewlis), arrested trying to smuggle into America, does a deal with the British government, and then escape.This is one biopic that is definitely less exciting than the real story. It's more of a long rambling list of crazy life. It's not done in the most exciting ways. He is simply a Nice guy with loving relationships who falls into a life of crime of a delivery guy. There is a lack of intensity or drama. It's a lot of wacky and outrageous. The danger doesn't feel visceral. It's definitely a crazy life and I can see the difficulty of distilling the random craziness into a cohesive story.

Enjoyable enough film with some good performances, but the subject matter of criminals doing illegal stuff, does nothing for me personally. The tenor of the piece seems to be that soft drugs are an expression of personal freedom and don't do any real harm, so Mr. Marks was some kind of freedom fighter. Well, your personal view is your own, but that argument does nothing for me. The law should not be made by individuals as it suits there own purpose and wonts. I dare say that may be Mr. Marks' view, but the film could be let off the hook on the defense that it is just putting the book up on the screen, which I am prepared to believe. Rhys Ifans is a charismatic presence, as ever, although David Thewlis steals their scenes in great style, Chloë Sevigny however, does not have a great deal to do. Fair enough diversion for an evening, but there are better 'drug' movies and better biopics.

It is with tedious inevitability that we are dragged like school children in a gallery through the (ostensibly quite interesting) life of Howard Marks. I felt like I was stoned just watching it. Time seemed to have have completely stopped functioning. Simultaneously I could see exactly what what going to happen next, whilst obtaining a massive sense of deja-vu from what had gone before. I then went to the fridge and ate everything I could find in it and began staring at stuff in my sitting room for ages and ages, mainly to avoid looking at the screen. Nothing to see here, nothing new to say. Not worth renting unless you are still impressed by a bit of grass because you're a first year Geography student from Kettering.

Impossible to review as a movie based so loosely on reality and truth that one feels that a child could have lived it. A shame - as one would love to believe that Howard Marks was some kind of Magician and on this poor representation one could only assume that he was and still is a man in constant psychosis of reality. A pioneer of nothing and a living off a story that is in his own mind. The addition of juxtaposed story threads with quite simply embarrassing pigeon-holed characters makes one weep and indeed takes away from the voice of the book. I would rather recommend a Disney movie as this, as is Howard's life; a nauseating talk-jockey, lazy and not-that-I-care believable journey of disappointment. No wonder he needs to smoke. The man and the voice deserved a whole lot better. A whole lot. The director has been directed and It is plain to see. Rhys Ifans is a wonderful actor mind you.