Mr. Nice (2010)

Impossible to review as a movie based so loosely on reality and truth that one feels that a child could have lived it. A shame - as one would love to believe that Howard Marks was some kind of Magician and on this poor representation one could only assume that he was and still is a man in constant psychosis of reality. A pioneer of nothing and a living off a story that is in his own mind. The addition of juxtaposed story threads with quite simply embarrassing pigeon-holed characters makes one weep and indeed takes away from the voice of the book. I would rather recommend a Disney movie as this, as is Howard's life; a nauseating talk-jockey, lazy and not-that-I-care believable journey of disappointment. No wonder he needs to smoke. The man and the voice deserved a whole lot better. A whole lot.

The director has been directed and It is plain to see. Rhys Ifans is a wonderful actor mind you.

Fmovies: Howard Marks (Rhys Ifans) comes from Garw in Wales. He was the smartest kid in the coal mining region and gets beaten up for it. He gets into Oxford. One night, Ilze Kadegis (Elsa Pataky) crawls through his window and he follows her to a life of drugs. They get married and become teachers. The straight life doesn't last long. Ilze divorces him and he falls for Judy (Chloë Sevigny). When his friend Graham Plinson (Jack Huston) gets arrested in Germany, he goes over and helps transport a car filled with hashish. It's the start of a life of crime as he smuggles drugs from Afghanistan to Britain. He gets involved with IRA member Jim McCann (David Thewlis), arrested trying to smuggle into America, does a deal with the British government, and then escape.

This is one biopic that is definitely less exciting than the real story. It's more of a long rambling list of crazy life. It's not done in the most exciting ways. He is simply a Nice guy with loving relationships who falls into a life of crime of a delivery guy. There is a lack of intensity or drama. It's a lot of wacky and outrageous. The danger doesn't feel visceral. It's definitely a crazy life and I can see the difficulty of distilling the random craziness into a cohesive story.

The Pitch: Howard The Skunk.

The Review: I spent four years at University in Bath, getting a degree and starting to develop my love of movies. While I was there, I came into contact with two things for the first time in my life: drugs, and the Welsh. Not a combination that I, or indeed anyone else, would necessarily put together, but that combination was responsible for one of the biggest drug trafficking rings ever seen in this country, or indeed any other. That Welshness was contributed fairly effectively by one man, Howard Marks, described by the Daily Mail as "the most sophisticated drugs baron of all time." Not that you'd know that from watching Mr. Nice. Rhys Ifans comes across as a fairly reasonable approximation of the man himself, and this is the story of his passage from the small coal-mining village where he grew up to Oxford, and the pronounced influence that had on his future direction. Despite becoming a big fan of recreational drugs, if Mr. Nice is to be believed Marks fell into his career almost by accident, just happening to be in either the right or wrong place at the appropriate time. Slowly but surely, he expands his influence and his reach, and every time an opportunity comes up, he takes it.

In order to get what he needs, he begins to rope in a motley crew of accomplices, and ends up getting involved with the IRA (a manic David Thewlis) and eventually even expands into the Americas (via a bearded Crispin Glover), despite the protestations of his wife (Chloe Sevigny), seemingly the only person who can appreciate the potential cost of the risks that Howard's taking. Through the course of this, don't expect deep insights into why Marks is doing what he's doing, or passionate arguments for the legalisation of recreational drugs – those are only implied in the sense that this really isn't Trainspotting, and the downsides of Howard's habits are the run-ins with the law that he had, not from what he or any others ended up taking.

But freed from the weight of those expectations, this is an enjoyable romp. Bernard Rose has both adapted the screenplay and directed – his direction is unshowy, but there are little stylised touches (inserting Ifans into stock historical footage) and the occasional impressive image, but by and large he lets the story do the talking. Thewlis probably gets to have the most fun, raging around with his accent, while the only slight weak link is Sevigny, the accent wavering just occasionally and the performance also slightly shaky. There's nothing shaky about anyone else, though, they're all too tripped out on the material, so just sit back, revel in the absurdities of the story (all true, as long as you believe Marks), and have a good time, man.

Why see it at the cinema: There's a few shots, such as a car crash, that will benefit from the big screen, but by and large you'd be here more for the company than the impact of the visuals.

The Score: 7/10

Mr. Nice fmovies. There are not many movies I have not watched until the end. This is unfortunately one of them. The book is amazing but I am not sure if all the actors have read it. I read it several times because of the wild ride that it is.

How anyone can turn this wild ride into a senior boat trip is beyond me.

Maybe they will make a remake of it in 10 years or so.

Until then I will read the book some more times...

...but, if you don't believe me, go see for yourself. I challenge you to watch it all the way through...

Having watched this tonight i think i can offer a fair review , its a joke to indicate the film doesn't have grounding within the book , there just too alike for words , however the book contains long winded accounts of activity that are tedious and boring , thankfully these sections were omitted from the film , good news then ? well no , sadly also key points in Howard marks life are also not in the film , the result has sections that make no sense whatsoever to the layman , Howard appeared to move around without reason and know people without explanation , the consequences of others actions are also omitted leaving a disjointed and slightly sinister film , there is humour but its not of the lol sort , knowing the film was shot over just 2 months then i think it shows , Howard marks has led a life so rich and varied and yet it simply wasn't portrayed in this film to its fullest , it leaves you with an empty feeling in that the film felt like soup when it could so easily have been steak , Ifans could not have done a better job and the only lightweight in the cast would be Chloe sevigney who didn't have much to say and didn't display a passion in the role , over all the film IMO is worth of a 6.5/10

First and foremost, if you haven't read the book or seen the film. Then please read the book first. Then if you want to afterwards, watch the film. Now I fully appreciate that novels, films, plays etc are all different forms of art and ways of telling stories, and people shouldn't always compare a film to the original book so harshly as most do. But immediately two books spring to mind that the writer of the novel has done a fantastic job, and so has the film in adapting it, I speak of, 'No Country for Old Men' and 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Cowards Robert Ford'. However, with 'Mr. Nice', the book is greatly written, it is funny, witty, heartwarming and a general entertaining easy read which is fantastic coming from such an intelligent man who doesn't have to prove himself by filling the novel with big clever words. But what he does do is fill it will the entirety of his life that makes for a fun and interesting read, that creates characters in your head you can picture so well and understand, and even at the end of wish you could of been apart of his life (for the good times anyway). Now the best way to describe what Bernard Rose did to the book to make the film was simply pick it up, and flick through it all in the that quick motion we can do with our thumb, letting the pages slide by and fan us as it goes. This is what the film felt like to me. It had no structure in terms of story to it, just episodes of the book he could pick out with his eyes as the pages flew past him and then shot it, and in the editing room tried to string them together to get some sort of story out it. Even if I hadn't read the book before and knew all that Rose had left out, I still wouldn't have connected with any of the characters on the screen or the story itself. You may say that a four hundred page book is difficult to squeeze into a two hour film, and that is fair enough, but I ask you to only look towards what Jackson and Walsh did for the LOTR. This then leads me to believe that Rose has no real writing skills and doesn't really no what a story is. Nor editing for that matter. But what annoyed me the most I think for this film is the total lack of knowledge towards the characters he was portraying on the film, now I may have read the book differently, and this is just my opinion, but I don't feel any of the characters were captured at all on the screen, especially Jim McCann, and every scene never went anywhere or made me feel anything towards them or the connection they should have with another. Like I said before, it just felt like Rose had took bits of the book out and tried stringing them together, giving us no real story or character arc. The only saving grace for this film for me was the fact that Rose remembered to put in a few of the good bits from the book itself, such as the funny scene in both book and film of when McCann and Marks are trying to talk to each other over the radio.