Inspired by the true story of Howard Marks, a well known drug dealer, who was born for a coal mine family, who joins the Oxford University, where he makes with the help of his friends a big networks for marijuana smuggling in the world.
Ifans looks 20 years too old for the part, and the problem with the movie is it seems so desperate to be made that it barely cares that he spends half of his time miscast.
East Bay Express
July 01, 2011
We're always ready to accept Ifans as a hedonistic daredevil.
Marks may be a gas as a storyteller, but there's a long way between a string of anecdotes and an actual narrative film. And "Mr. Nice," for all its energy, doesn't make the transition.
Ultimately, Mr. Nice doesn't transcend its genre, but the title character is a bright addition to the cinematic rogues' gallery of charmers for whom the real high isn't the drugs or the cash, but the con.
[Ifans] captures the character's charisma and cool, and it's fun to ride shotgun with him. But the script isn't pointed enough to drill beneath the surface.
Effortlessly captures the looks, attitudes and the various mentalities of the period from the late 1960s and early 1970s, through the transition from the hippie era into the Studio 54 days, followed by the Just-Say-No retrenchment of the 1980s.
what Mr. Nice offers is a stylish and fascinating biography that, while perhaps playing loose with the facts, knows that it's far more entertaining to watch the highs than the lows.
Though the film takes a while to cast its spell, writer-director-cinematographer Bernard Rose's close observation of Marks and those around him becomes increasingly involving and allows Rose to comment on the widespread failure of the war on drugs.
