It remains a rather slight crime-caper, distinguished mostly by Ifans' jaunty performance as Howard Marks. NICE does not have that much to say, either about the ethics - if there can be such a thing - of drug-smuggling, nor about the lengths to which people will go to try and evade customs-officers of various countries. During the mid 1980s Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines and owned twenty-five companies trading. The film's tone remains lighthearted throughout, and there are some convincing scenes where modern-day actors are inserted into authentically Seventies archive scenes (complete with washed-out colors). Bernard Rose's biopic encourages us to admire Rose's chutzpah, as he encounters a variety of shady characters, including practicing IRA member Jim McCann (David Thewlis, speaking in an eccentric Irish accent), and American cartel owner Ernie Combs (Crispin Glover). He subsequently went on to become one of Britain's most celebrated (notorious?) drug barons, leading an exuberant lifestyle while successfully evading most attempts at capture. Howard Marks (Rhys Ifans) grew up in a Welsh village, went to Oxford a relative innocent, and emerged from university as a fully-fledged drug smuggler.
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