Mr Nice The Movie is the life story of Howard Marks, an elite Welsh cannabis smuggler.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2lZtyrmluA[/youtube]
Howard Marks (aka Mr Nice) born 1945 in Glamorgan, Wales, is a former teacher, drug smuggler and author who achieved notoriety as an international hashish smuggler through high-profile court cases, supposed connections with groups such as the IRA, and the Mafia, and his eventual conviction at the hands of the American Drug Enforcement Administration. At the height of his drug career, he was said to have controlled 10% of the world’s hashish trade. This film loosely follows the story of his life from beginning to current day. Rhys Ifans plays Howard Marks.
During the mid 1980s, Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines, and twenty five companies trading throughout the world.
Bars, recording studios, offshore banks: all were money-laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing.
Marks began to deal during a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford and was soon moving large quantities of hashish into Europe and America in the equipment of touring rock bands. The academic life began to lose its allure.
At the height of his career, he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organisations as diverse as the CIA, MI6, the IRA, and the Mafia.
After many years and a world-wide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to twenty five years in prison at the United States Federal Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, the site of America’s only Federal Death Row.
He was released on parole in April 1995 after serving seven years of his sentence.
