Marks is a real guy and, at one point, is believed to have controlled up to ten percent of the total global trade in hashish. Which is rather a lot for a former physics student and school teacher from Wales. Here's how he describes himself on his official website:
But that's Marks the man. What about Marks the film? Due for release in the UK rather soon, the theatrical trailer has just arrived. Ifans looks fantastic in the lead and the whole thing pops with energy. This is certainly the happy side of the drug trade - it's based on Marks' autobiography, so I would expect any Requiem For A Dream style grittiness - and executed with a ton of style. Check it below.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.
Not only that, it's the new film by Bernard Rose, who it's always good to see back behind the camera. And with a budget this time!
That looks great.
I read his 1st book when it came out. Looks better than I remember.
And Rose's 'Paperhouse' was a stunning film.
The trailer definitely hits the mark.
Bernard Rose = Awesome!