Pusher III

This film is a portrait of a gangster boss. We witness the downfall of the once so cool and untouchable Milo that we got to know in the first Pusher film. Milo is trying to maintain his position in the competitive dopemarket of Copenhagen, but times are changing and younger generations are taking over. On top of this, Milo is trying to quit using dope himself and is attending meetings in Narcotics Anonymous, and he is trying to be a good father to his daughter and make her birthday party a good one.

Nicolas Winding Refn has a way of making my stomach twist and turn like no other director. I can watch gore and splatter films no problem, but the cold and cynical violence in the Pusher gets to me, because it is set in a, for me, very realistic environment. I'm not sure that I like it, but one thing is for sure; it works. The character descriptions are, as always, very believable. The mixing of a lot of the different languages of the different gangs is a funny feature, that I like. Technically, the hand-held camera works okay, but it's not the best. Music and lighting effects are great.

The film is not as good as the first Pusher film, but it has its moments, Zlatko Buric is enjoyable every second, gore is for gore-lovers, the Pusher "mood" is there and it is a fine ending of a remarkable and original trilogy that the danish film scene can be proud of.

Come take a look at the violence and depravity that goes on in ... Copenhagen.

Copenhagen? Yup. But this is pretty effin' far from Hans Christian Anderson and the Little Mermaid.

This movie caps Nicolas Winding Refn's gangster trilogy and veers off in a somewhat different direction from the first two. "Pusher I" and "Pusher II" were tense and violent movies about the Danish drug trade, but both had an element of comedy.

By contrast, Pusher III is one of the darkest movies I've ever seen and it has an extended scene at the end that would never, ever be allowed in a mainstream Hollywood gangster movie.

Pusher III happens in a 24-hour period as we follow along with Milo, a mid-level drug kingpin who is apparently a Serb. Milo has a busy day ahead of him. His daughter's 25th birthday is that evening and he's promised to cook food for 50 people. His product supplier got shipments mixed up and sent Milo 10,000 ecstasy tabs instead of the usual heroin. He's withdrawing from heroin himself and drops in at NA meetings during the day. His crew is getting ornery, giving him lip all the time.

Sigh. It's hard out there for a gangster. You almost feel sorry for the schlub.

Then, when a Polish pimp shows up wanting cash in exchange for a badly frightened 18-year-old girl he has in tow, things start to go bad.

This is in no sense of the word an action movie, although there are murders. No guns, either. It's remarkable how directors from outside the U.S. can take material Americans are completely familiar with and make it look completely different. Take the Korean monster movie "The Host" and the Swedish vampire movie "Let the Right One In." Familiar material. Brand new take.

"Pusher III"is like that. It has stretches where not much happens. But it builds to a horrifying climax all the more horrifying because it plays out utterly matter of fact.

And props to Zlatko Buric, who plays Milo. The camera is on him for the entire movie and we get to know every seam in his weary face.

It must be hell being Milo. This film starts off as one of those "everything-goes-wrong"- movies that were so in vogue in the mid-nineties – although the focus here is not some spectacular heist but a routine heroin deal, all in a day's work for aging mid-level Serb gangster Milo.

In a way, the plot (not the film) starts out resembling that part in Goodfellas, where Ray Liotta has to keep his mind on a lot of different things at the same time and ends up being busted.

Milo also has a lot of things to mind – the heroin shipment from Holland, the preparations for his daughter's twenty-fifth birthday, keeping his NA appointments and actually staying off blow and tar for his daughter's sake as he's promised himself. The fact that he has to cook the whole birthday dinner for a party of 50 himself, and that his daughter is a full- blown Serbian bitch, surely doesn't help matters much.

Then there are some unforeseen complications which I will not discuss, but that seem to be evidence that the gods or somebody must be against poor Milo. Where most of the problems facing Pusher II:s anti-hero Tönnie seems to stem from his own weakness (and thus are perfectly believable), the combination of shortcomings that Milo faces seems a bit more far- fetched.

But anyway, that doesn't make this film less worth viewing. Just like the two other parts of the trilogy, it's a dark, depressing story full of characters and surroundings that seem perfectly real in every sense. The Scandinavian criminal underworld, with its Serbs, Albanians, Arabs and natives. Copenhagen is in many ways the heaviest of the capitals of Scandinavia, and has been rife with organized and not-so-organized crime since well back in the seventies.

One thing has to be said about the main character, Milo. The way he's portrayed in this film, I found myself having to remind myself of the Milo of the first Pusher film, the smiling gang boss having his henchman torturing small-time dealer Franke with electric wires. Whatever happens to Milo in this film, he's deserved it. Just keep that in mind.

I found Pusher Three the best of the trilogy and would strongly disagree with anyone who bashes on this film. Of course, what makes the Pusher movies great is how realistic the scenarios are. Unlike Tarintino, who's dialog is tricky, sometimes too tricky, the Pusher films have simple, believable dialog. Similair to The Sapranos, Pusher III's appeal is seeing the personal life of gangsters. Milo is a chef and restaurant owner but a drug dealer behind the scenes. Its great seeing Milo go back and fourth between preparing a fifty person meal for his daughters 25th Birthday and settling a drug deal in the back room. A great movie that shows you the stress of a gangster trying to maintain his status as a family man. Milo is one of my favorite movie drug dealers. If your not into drugs, you probably won't appreciate all the minor details of the Pusher trilogy.

The director Nicolas Winding Refn once again delivers a day of total agony and disaster. This day is almost as well presented as Frank's day in Pusher and gives you a look inside the life of a junkie, psychopath and father; Milo the drug-dealer.

Although the entire movie feels slow-paced there are few movies which will leave you as stunned and with such an ugly feeling inside your stomach. This one is truly merciless in it's presentation of the criminal world in Copenhagen, and globally, where nothing is tabu and everyone lives by a code as dark as charcoal.

This deterioration of gangster and his respect is a truly scary journey filled with disappointment, failure and death.