Tradecraft: High Spy

The Hollywood Reporter's headline is "Ifans smoked out as pic's drug-dealing spy," but the movie in question doesn't actually sound like the comedy that (or my own title, for that matter) implies. It's not Agent 420: The Movie. It's a potentially quirky British independent biopic. The film is Mr. Nice, Bernard Rose's (Immortal Beloved) adaptation of a memoir by real life spy and international drug dealer Howard Marks. The trade elaborates: "[Rhys] Ifans will play a late-'60s-era Oxford grad and teacher who turned to drug smuggling to impress his future wife Judy (Chloe Sevigny). While enlisting the help of an Irish Republican Army boss (David Thewlis) for a job, he was recruited by a British intelligence officer for a loose network of informants." The memoir includes encounters with the Mafia and the CIA. Apparently the book has quite a cult following, and Rose directed one of my favorite indie biopics of recent years, Ivansxtc, so this could be quite good!