On Demand Weekly

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.