Mr. Nice

Narrative Feature, Headliners
D: Bernard Rose; with Rhys Ifans, Chloë Sevigny, David Thewlis, Luis Tosar, Crispin Glover, Omid Djalili

We have seen the tale of the charismatic drug kingpin played out a time or two, but rarely with the wit and style Mr. Nice lines up. Rose’s biopic hews to the real-life story of Howard Marks – a Welsh-born Oxford grad who built a complex global distribution network that moved unbelievable quantities of hashish for close to three decades – but the film has the quality of aspirational fantasy. Rose starts in black and white, with Marks as a preteen, switching to color as the Sixties arrive and making witty use of stock footage as the film moves forward. If Marks has anywhere near Ifans’ presence, it’s easy to see why he’s a legend; Thewlis, as an IRA-associated lunatic, is the only actor onscreen who manages to shift our attention. Marks’ roots, intelligence, and the facts that he neither employed violence nor dealt anything harder than hash argue for his inclusion in the anti-hero pantheon; Mr. Nice makes the case ably.

This article appears in March 26 • 2010.

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