Film Reviews

Mr. Nice

• Rating:
• Director: Bernard Rose
• Starring: Chloe Sevigny
• Details: UK / 121mins (18).

Based on the best selling book of the same name, a perennial student favourite, Mr. Nice charts the rise and fall of Howard Marks, an ordinary bloke who transforms from a mousy schoolteacher into an international drug smuggler. Marks claims he stumbled into the 'job' only because he acquired more hash and grass than he could smoke himself; the film concurs by stumbling about the story too. A ramshackle affair it might be but Ifans and his co-stars save the day.
Born in a Welsh mining town, Marks (Ifans) moves to Oxford where he falls in with the early 60s drug culture. The shy, quiet boy launches himself headlong into the scene and when his friend and dealer is arrested in Austria, he's asked to drive the latest shipment home as a favour. Marks obliges and soon finds himself making more trips which leads him into the company of Afghan drug smuggler Saleem Makik (comedian Omid Djalli). Assuming the name Donald Nice, IRA associate Jim McCann (Thewlis) allows him to break into the Irish territory while wired Californian dealer Ernie Combs (Glover - who else?) opens the gateway to America. Along the way he's employed by MI5 to spy on drug smugglers.
Writer-director Bernard Rose (best known for cult horror Candyman and the underrated Beethoven biopic Immortal Beloved) knows what stones to land on but Mr. Nice staggers from Plot Point A to Plot Point C with little regard for B. The jumpy tone might have worked if Rose settled on some sequences to ground the film but no (he could have upped the ante Midnight Express style at the border crossing scenes, but they zip by with little tension). Even though he uses Ifans' sporadic narration to get into the mind of Marks, there is little insight into what made him the counterculture hero that he is.
Where the plot might be A to B stuff, the performances make Mr. Nice worthwhile. Ifans, comically playing every Marks from childhood to adulthood, isn't suitable to the role but this is exactly the point - Marks didn't look, sound or act like a smuggler either, which is why he kept himself under the radar for so long. Ifans might not fit but he's fun as the charming rogue and displays more than just comic timing when Mr. Nice moves into more dramatic territory. A heavily bearded Crispin Glover is a delight when he shows up and it's a pity there isn't more of him (ditto Djalli) but it's Thewlis that threatens to run away with the movie every time he shows up - his dangerously erratic and paranoid IRA man sticks out like a sore thumb and yet strangely fits into the madcap goings on. Sevigny, though, has nothing much to do but frown and look after the kids.
There are a few giggles along the way (like the confusion over the complicated code words) but the book deserves a better film.

Review by Gavin Burke