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Summary: ‘Mr. Nice’

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Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2010 > March > 15 > Entry

By Matthew Odam | Monday, March 15, 2010, 10:41 AM

As he displayed in the brief Q&A following the screening of “Mr. Nice” at the Paramount Theatre Sunday evening, Rhy Ifans does not lack for winning, rapscallion charm. Unfortunately, the script from which he had to work for this ambling biopic was not as strong as he is.

Beginning with a forced narrative device that allows the story to jump into flashback mode, the movie tells the story of Howard Marks, a massive hashish smuggler from Wales who became something of a counter-culture icon.

The inclusion of scenes at the beginning of the movie depicting Marks as a much-bullied, un-athletic kid is just the first example of the film’s need of editing. Nothing about his treatment as a child informs the dashing and risk-taking character we follow through the film.

When a chance encounter with some dorm mates at Oxford introduces Marks to the liberating and expansive effects of THC, a lifelong romance begins. Although he cleans himself up for a brief period (another interlude that the film could have done without), Mark is eventually seduced into the world of cloak-and-dagger international drug smuggling, as he serves as a conduit between the fields of Afghanistan and the streets of swinging London and eventually the United States. Helping him cover his tracks is IRA combatant Jim McCann (David Thewlis), who agrees to conspire with Marks despite knowing that his dalliance in the drug trade would not sit well with his revolutionary brethren. Thewlis plays the character with an unsettling menace early but the character eventually fades into mere caricature, and he slips in and out of the story in a head-scratching way.

The film is interesting in the sense that it reveals a figure likely not widely known and shows a gentle and human side to the rabble rousing Welsh folk hero whom Ifans admittedly idolized growing up, but it rambles on entirely too long and can not be saved by its lead. There are several times in this low-stakes “Gooodfellas” where an end seems perfectly fitting, only to give way to yet another run from the law or subsequent court trial. Unfortunately, by the end, I was left not caring too greatly about the eventual fate of this seemingly very likable man with the out-sized personality.

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