Mr. Nice (2011)

Sick Product of a Sick System

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

As I watched Mr. Nice, it quickly became clear that the story was based on a real person, Howard Marks, about whom I was previously ignorant. It was sort of amusing watching this in part because marijuana laws have been falling like dominoes, with possession and use and even selling decriminalized in the United States. This fellow got into a lot of trouble for dealing hashish, when only a few decades later it's no longer considered such a big deal.As for the story, it's not that exciting (one reason why I inferred that it must be based on history). The message is more or less that drugs should be legal and people should be able to partake if they wish to. Given recent developments, this film is pretty much preaching to the choir. It is of primarily historical interest that a dealer should be aligned along with felons, many of whom have committed much more serious, usually violent, crimes. The film is opens in the hippie era and follows it until it finally wanes in the 1980s. The authentic depiction of those times in Britain was a plus. I also enjoyed the portrayal of the hard-core IRA arms dealer with whom Marks was in cahoots for a while. Given the company he kept, one must ask: was Marks as innocent as he appears in this quasi-biopic? I don't know. In this respect, Mr. Nice reminds me a bit of Goodfellas, where we are asked to believe that Henry Hill never killed anyone. Not very plausible, to be perfectly frank.I did not find the main character very interesting in his own right. He was basically a pothead, as was his wife (Chloë Sevigny), who seemed to be pretty much devoid of a personality. They both seemed nice enough, so his adopted alias, Mr. Nice, was certainly appropriate. The couple was apparently not big on birth control, because they kept having more babies. The production values were more like a made-for-TV production, and perhaps that is what this was.

Biopic of Welsh hash smuggler, Howard Marks. Lightweight, by the numbers approach as young Marks goes to Oxford, straight as an arrow, discovers reefer, begins the transformation. Next thing, he's collaborating with IRA patriots to smuggle Afghan hash. Money for lifestyle or guns. Several funny anecdotal scenes, yet nowhere does this dig for substance. Big deals in the US skitter by, swimming pool styling in Mallorca added to show - I suppose - how boring the clean life was. Some of the cinematography intrigues as they have characters drive or walk in front of obvious rear projection of 60s or 70s exteriors. Too long at two hours, and still seemed shallow. Rhys Myers (as Howard) distracted by reminding me of singer Liam Gallagher (Oasis).

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I honestly did not expect that I would enjoy it after having read the book.Last year I read Joseph D Pistone's "Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life In The Mafia" and watched the film immediately afterwards and I felt the film paled in comparison to the book. Therefore after I had read "Mr Nice" and knew there was a film adaptation I felt it would be as big a disappointment as Donnie Brasco.On this basis I left it a couple of months after reading the book before watching Mr Nice and as a result I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. When I put the DVD in and it starts off with Rhys Ifans in front of a crowd asking if anybody was a plains cloths officer I had my doubts about how the film would be portrayed but once the black and white prologue turned to colour I was gripped.Obviously this is not a perfect account of Howard Mark's life as many people have said you can not translate a 600 page book into a 2 hour film without missing many parts out but I feel it was not so much a literal depiction of the book but rather a visual interpretation of Howard Mark's life using the book as a starting point. As others have mentioned it leaves out much of his life based in Hong Kong and Thailand and The Phillipines as well as the feeling of despair when confronted with being deported to the United States and even the fact the judge called the wrong outcome which is something a film would normally expand upon. Every actor in this film felt believable as the character they portray.I enjoyed this film more than I ever expected to therefore I feel a rating of 7 is justified. However I do feel the need to criticise the few scenes that earned this film an 18 rating. Jim McCann getting his knob out and the tooth extraction scene near the end of the film felt unnecessary. Don't get me wrong I prefer films to have scenes which disgust but there is a place for that sort of thing and I did not feel this film warranted it. It could have reached a better audience had it skipped these scenes and had a 15 rating.However I feel I may have rated this film higher than it deserves based on not being disappointed, which made me feel relieved.

A common problem with biographical films about notorious con-men (or marijuana drug dealers) is whether to show them as sympathetic, or ruthless—as they usually are. The problem with "Mr. Nice" and Howard Marks (Rhys Ifans) is that there wasn't enough meaningful scenes showing us who Howard Marks was at all. For those like me, who didn't know who he was before the film, this is a really big problem.Rhys Ifans is very good at mumbling and speaking rather unintelligibly but making it humorous, entertaining, and somehow understandable. This would be a much more positive trait if the voice of his character wasn't supposed to be as important as it seemingly was. Although I still don't know who he was so I can't say if Howard Marks was an important voice to society or not.It was certainly more artistic and thoughtful than most marijuana movies are, but much less artistic and thoughtful than the best character studies. Again, this is a pretty big problem—if you're expecting more than just a marijuana movie, which I was. I wanted to be educated, while entertained, about this supposedly important person, but I was not.