Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Twins65 This is a straight-ahead biopic on Howard Marks, who was a famous drug dealer in the U.K., and who I was unfamiliar with. It was very similar in style to "Blow", the biopic of George Jung, a big U.S.A. cocaine dealer from yesteryear played by Johnny Depp. It even included a shot with the aged, incarcerated Marks meeting with his children, just as Jung did at the end of "Blow", when his grown-up daughter showed up.Rhys Ifans plays Marks from his high school days (which surely was a stretch to look at) all the way to the very end, which shows him addressing a crowd after he's released from prison and lighting up a bat fat joint. He does a decent job, and is a very watchable actor. In between, we get the standard biopic narrative of how it all went down. The drugs are dealt, the money comes rolling in, and the law eventually shows up later. Included are some scenes with Jack Huston and a totally over-the-top David Thewlis, both great actors. Chloë Sevigny does an OK job pulling off a British accent while playing his wife, who also gets pinched along the way.Check it out if you're interested, but there's nothing ground-breaking going on in this movie.

SnoopyStyle Howard Marks (Rhys Ifans) comes from Garw in Wales. He was the smartest kid in the coal mining region and gets beaten up for it. He gets into Oxford. One night, Ilze Kadegis (Elsa Pataky) crawls through his window and he follows her to a life of drugs. They get married and become teachers. The straight life doesn't last long. Ilze divorces him and he falls for Judy (Chloë Sevigny). When his friend Graham Plinson (Jack Huston) gets arrested in Germany, he goes over and helps transport a car filled with hashish. It's the start of a life of crime as he smuggles drugs from Afghanistan to Britain. He gets involved with IRA member Jim McCann (David Thewlis), arrested trying to smuggle into America, does a deal with the British government, and then escape.This is one biopic that is definitely less exciting than the real story. It's more of a long rambling list of crazy life. It's not done in the most exciting ways. He is simply a Nice guy with loving relationships who falls into a life of crime of a delivery guy. There is a lack of intensity or drama. It's a lot of wacky and outrageous. The danger doesn't feel visceral. It's definitely a crazy life and I can see the difficulty of distilling the random craziness into a cohesive story.

jpdhadfield i had heard of Howard marks, but didn't know much about him, so i looked forward to seeing this film, i wasn't disappointed, its a good romp, i wasn't bored once, some people might think a film about a drug smuggler would be bad, but hash is no worse then booze in the wrong hands. And the film is really an anti drug smuggling film, as Howard loses years of life he would have been spending with his wife and children , prisonlife is not fun,if you like seeing films about people, who live unusual lives , then you'll enjoy this film.my only gripe is the volume is quite low in places and mood music too loud, so they make it hard to hear whats being said.maybe i need a surround system.But that aside id recommend this film .

MrGoodMovie Like the character it portrays, this film can't quite decide whether it is an affable and somewhat naïve Welshman, or a hardened international drug smuggler with terrorist and underworld connections. The movie primarily portrays Howard Marks as the harmless purveyor of hashish from Pakistan/Afghanistan into Europe, the US and Canada. It also shows him as an intense family man, rudely interrupted by constant telephone calls to and from the front men in his drug smuggling operations. Maybe this should not be surprising, as it is based on his autobiography.However, it is difficult to believe that someone as clearly intelligent as Marks would not have understood the gravity of what he was doing and that, sooner or later, his luck was going to run out. And this is the part of Marks' life which the film left inexplicably unexplored.There were two moments when the veil slipped. The first was the unexplained death of a party-goer in Howard Marks' Oxford days. The second was the consignment of semtex destined for the IRA mixed with the somewhat less lethal stuff that Marks was smuggling.I actually agree with Marks' views on the legalisation of recreational drugs. But I feel somewhat cheated by a film that looks so superficially at an individual, and the consequences of his actions on society as a whole.