Starring top Brit actor Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill, The Boat That Rocked) as Howard Marks, the world-famous drug baron, and with high calibre support from David Thewlis (The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, Harry Potter) and Academy Award® nominee Chloë Sevigny (Zodiac, Boys Don’t Cry), this iconic tale of one man’s rise and fall is brought to life.
During the mid 1980’s, Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and 25 companies trading throughout the world. Bars, recording studios, offshore banks: all were money-laundering vehicles serving the core activity of dope dealing. Marks began to deal during a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford University, and with the help of drug pushers (Omid Djalili; Gladiator, The Mummy and Crispin Glover; Back to the Future Trilogy, Beowulf) started dealing hashish throughout Europe and America in touring rock bands’ equipment. The academic life began to lose its allure…
From a South Wales upbringing to a lifestyle of smuggling consignments of up to 30 tonnes from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada, Marks had contact with organisations as diverse as the CIA, MI6, the IRA and the Mafia. Travelling between London, Ireland, L.A. and New York, Marks lived a rich and glamorous life with the girl of his dreams, Judy (Sevigny), and laughed in the face of all those trying to stop him. After many years and a world-wide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to 25 years behind bars where he had to endure seven years of hard time in one of America’s toughest prisons before he was released on parole in April 1995.
DVD & Blu-ray Extras• Director’s Commentary
• Audio Commentary with Howard Marks
• Deleted Scenes
• Cast and Crew Interviews
• Behind the Scenes
• Howard and Rhys on stage
Mr. Nice is out on DVD and Blu-ray on 31 January 2011