Nicolas Winding Refn's
Pusher Trilogy
Had them in my Prime queue for some time but the first installment left Prime yesterday and the last two are set to leave July 4th so I figured I'd better get a move on.
Pusher (1996) focuses on Frank (Kim Bodnia) a mid level drug dealer in Copenhagen, Denmark. He and his manic sidekick Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen in his film debut) aimlessly while away their hours buying and reselling various types of illicit narcotics. It's weird because in the drug dealing milieu of movies like
Superfly,
New Jack City and
Carlito's Way the dealer usually has an endgame in mind. But a goal is never even alluded to and the two don't really come off as partners. They don't even appear to like each other much so there are no bonds of loyalty that the script can topple in the second act. It's all just dark, violent and random acts. The films refusal to romanticize the drug trade is it's greatest strength and main draw.
Through a series of misfortunes, double crosses and his own careless actions, Frank eventually ends up in debt to a ruthless Serbian drug lord named Milo (Zlatko Burić). The rest of the film details his inexorable descent.
85/100
Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands (2004) - This one turns it's focus to Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen), Franks old sidekick. As the movie opens he's just been released from prison for some unspecified crime. The first place he goes to is his father Smeden's (Leif Sylvester) garage. His nickname is The Duke and he's a feared and respected gangster in his own right. He deals mostly in stolen cars and provides seed money for other criminal ventures. He's openly derisive of Tonny and has long considered him a screwup, focusing his attention on Tonny's ten year old half brother Valdemar. Tonny finds out that he may have fathered a child with a local woman and being a basically good hearted guy comes to care for the child.
Kurt, a friend of Tonny's, ropes him into coming along on a drug buy where Serbian crime boss Milo shows up. Through a paranoid fueled misunderstanding, Kurt ends up losing the product and is unable to repay his backer who happens to be The Duke. Kurt has manipulated Tonny so as to shield him from retaliation from his father. He in turn demands the money from his son and Tonny offers to rough up Valdemar's mother who runs a local brothel. She's been demanding full custody and The Duke agrees to let Tonny work off his debt but only if he gets rid of her permanently.
I found this to be the best of the three and that's mainly due to Mads Mikkelsen and his uncanny knack for delineating a character while employing very little dialogue. He often speaks volumes with a single look and the film's coda fills the viewer with equal parts hope and dread.
90/100
Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death (2005) - The final chapter sort of brings it full circle and features the only character who appeared in all three films, Serbian crime lord Milo played by Zlatko Burić. He does a great job with the role and if he looks familiar it's because you saw him in
2012 where he played John Cusack's Russian oligarch boss Yuri Karpov. Here Milo is middle aged and he's living through an especially hectic day where he's volunteered to cook for the 50 guests at his demanding daughter Milena's (Marinela Dekić) 25th birthday celebration.
On top of that the five day sober Milo leaves a Narcotics Anonymous meeting to take delivery of a heroin shipment and finds that his Albanian suppliers have sent him 10,000 Ecstasy pills. Refn uses characters from the other two movies and one of these is Muhammed (Ilyas Agac) who was in part II. Milo has never sold Ecstasy so after he gives his crew food poisoning from one of his dishes he must depend on Muhammad to sell off the pills.
The storyline mirrors the one in the first
Pusher movie with events conspiring to put Milo in debt to Albanian boss Luan and his dirtbag interpreter Rexho. It all leads to a visceral burst of violence followed by a gruesomely straightforward sequence that some might have trouble with. It closes on a quiet note with a subdued Milo lost in contemplation and starting to tune in to what the world has been trying to tell him.
90/100