By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Bernard Rose
Starring: Chloe Sevigny | Crispin Glover | David Thewlis | Elsa Pataky | Rhys Ifans
Country: spain, united_kingdom
Year: 2011
Running time: 121
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183911/
Thom says: “Surveying director Rose’s rather run-of-the-mill curriculum vitae (IMMORTAL BELOVED, PAPERHOUSE, CANDYMAN, etc.), I had no reason to suspect I’d enjoy this film so much & would have probably passed on it were it not featuring the indomitable Ms. Sevigny. The central character of the film is Howard Marks, a real person, and the film is adapted from his biography of the same name. Marks is a Welsh man who moved to the ‘big city’ and through a series of mostly comical circumstances and weird coincidences became an international drug smuggler. The film steers us through the unbridled times of casual sex, illegal substances, on to duplicity, covetousness, and finally a penitentiary sentence for Marks, who then emerges to lead a ‘normal’ life; all the while Marks and his cheery hangers-on traverse their way against a lavish milieu of 70’s appropriation. Marks, a bit of a player when first starting out, meets Judy (a dazzling Sevigny) and she’s his lifelong mate and supporter. The best turn is an hilarious one by the always vibrant Thewlis as an I.R.A. terrorist who becomes Marks’ ‘middle man’. Director Rose nicely adds terrific flourishes that propel the story that might well have seemed ordinary in someone else’s hands. The lack of an intruding moral point-of-view, that eventually swamped TRAFFIC, brings a breezy reading that is fun and involving. 4 1/2 cats“