Bernard Rose’s MR. NICE - the story of the drug smuggler Howard Marks → On Demand Weekly

Bernard Rose’s MR. NICE - the story of the drug smuggler Howard MarksJanuary 18, 2012

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On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: MR. NICE (Filmbuff).

MR. NICE

By Chris Claro

Bernard Rose’s MR. NICE is the fact-based story of the titular drug smuggler – real name Howard Marks – who tangled not only with police MI6 and the CIA, but developed a dangerously close relationship with the IRA through one of its busiest arms dealers, Jim McCann. Written, directed, edited and photographed by Rose (IMMORTAL BELOVED), MR. NICE eschews the horrors of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and lacks the self-assured bounce of BLOW, though it tells a similar story of the rise and fall of one of the most notorious dope peddlers of the 20th century.

Rhys Ifans (ANONYMOUS) stars as Marks, who spends his childhood dodging school and bullies, but makes it to an elite university, where he is turned on to the power of hashish as both a narcotic and a source of income. Savvy enough to grasp that he’ll need allies on both sides of the law Marks forms a partnership with the violent McCann (David Thewlis, WAR HORSE) even as he assures his buddy MI6 contact McMillan (Christian McKay, TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY) that he will spy on McCann and report back on his activities.

Though MR. NICE features numerous staples of the drug-smuggling flick, including exotic locales, a charismatic lead, and a stand-by-your-man wife (Chloe Sevigny, BOYS DON’T CRY), the film is curiously flat. It’s an uninspired biopic that tells its story in a disappointingly conventional linear format. Not that every crime flick needs a disjointed timeline or a period-appropriate score to give it some zip, but drug smuggling has been a cinematic staple for so long that revisiting it requires a filmmaker to bring something new to the genre.

Sporting a wig that may be historically accurate but makes him look like the lead in a Jeff Beck cover band, Ifans plays Marks as a devoted family man who just happens to move millions of dollars worth of dope for a living. Motivated by the cash, Marks is almost smart enough to avoid getting caught, but expanding his empire to the US proves to be his undoing. Ifans makes the character a charming rogue but little more.

Thewlis makes McCann an unpredictable firebrand and the one character who gives the film a sense of danger. Sevigny is underserved by the script and she is left stranded without a character to play. It’s interesting to see a bearded, hirsute Crispin Glover – who I initially mistook for Steve Zahn, due to the high-pitched register he and Glover share – as Marks’s American connection, but he too is less a flesh-and-blood character than just another based-on-fact figure in the drug dealer’s life.

The this-happened-then-that-happened construct of MR. NICE makes it easy to follow, but equally easy to dismiss. The period elements feel true but the film lacks a center, and though Ifans tries hard, Marks remains a cipher throughout. Some could look at MR. NICE and argue that making the protagonist an enigma offers a specific perspective on the real Howard Marks. Those people may be right. But a two-hour film in which the main character is just as opaque at the end as at the beginning, as he is in MR. NICE, is curiously unsatisfying.

- Chris Claro

Chris
Chris Claro is a contributing writer to On Demand Weekly. He is a former Director of Promotion for Sundance Channel and now works as a writer, producer, and media educator. He is a regular contributor to dvdverdict.com and contributor to the Eyes and Ears section of huffingtonpost.com