Mr Nice (Blu-ray) Blu-ray, 2010

A comedy drama based on the life of celebrated British drug smuggler Howard Marks, Mr Nice stars Rhys Ifans stars as the charismatic Welshman who is drawn into drug dealing after he graduates from Oxford University. Marks's legitimate school-teaching career soon disappears in a puff of smoke however, after a favour for an old friend leads to a lucrative cannabis-smuggling trip. By the time his career reaches its zenith in the 1980s, Marks is smuggling 30-ton consignments of marijuana from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and has forged dubious connections with members of the IRA and the British secret services. Chloe Sevigny and David Thewlis co-star.

Mr Nice, Howard Mark’s massively best-selling memoir of his high life as an international drug trafficker, finally arrives on DVD – and it’s an absolute must-see for f... more >

Mr Nice, Howard Mark’s massively best-selling memoir of his high life as an international drug trafficker, finally arrives on DVD – and it’s an absolute must-see for fans of the book. Rhys Ifans (who is really coming into his on as a screen lead with this and a great recent performance in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg) plays the titular Mr Nice Howard Marks from his early days at Eton through his short stint as a ‘straight’ (working as a teacher) before eventually graduating into the smuggler a great many people know and love today. With strong support from the likes of Chloe Sevigny (Mark’s Carmela Soprano), David Thewlis (a highly strung IRA man whose pig fetish provides the most hilarious scene of the film) and Crispian Glover (as a wispy bearded free love apostate), Mr Nice is that contradictory beast: a palatable and entertaining biopic on a subject that some people would say was an unpalatable and disconcerting. < less

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