It makes a change to see a movie about criminality that doesn't romanticise male bonding and violence. And by glossing over some of the nastier aspects of the illegal hashish trade, director Bernard Rose's film works very nicely as an elegant if somewhat fey alternative. Essentially it's a biopic, with Rhys Ifans as Howard Marks, the highly intelligent Welsh Oxford graduate who, in the 1970s, became the world's most prolific drug smuggler. But Rose intentionally blurs fact and fiction, creating more of a sense of myth than reality. The rights and wrongs of this are open to debate, especially when Marks is seen cavorting with Mujahidin soldiers and crackpot IRA terrorists. There's a brilliantly bizarre cameo by David Thewlis as Republican rebel Jim McCann and an underused Chloë Sevigny as Marks's wife, Judy, and look hard for director Ken Russell in a small role. The scenes leading up to Marks's comeuppance are exciting and darkly comic, though the movie becomes frustratingly busy in the final scenes. But it gives a very good sense of why a bright young man would leave teacher training to become the most wanted man in Britain.