Pusher

Nicolas Winding Refn modernized the crime film genre with his Pusher trilogy. Thinking about that and the era he made the first part makes you probably think of another crime film modernizer of the 90's, Quentin Tarantino. He made something totally new in the United States with three crime films: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997). People often see Tarantino as one of the most important directors in the crime genre, because he influenced it a lot. In the same way Nicolas Winding Refn made something completely original. He made Pusher. A movie about a drug-dealer who gets into a debt swirl. The way Refn shows the lives of the criminals is harsh. It's different from other 90's crime films, because it doesn't show any glamor in the underworld life. No one has got expensive cars, all of them live in their cruddy apartments, they aren't that rich and they all are under the control of their addiction to drugs.

Pusher is about a drug-dealer, Frank (Kim Bodnia) whose life isn't pretty. His only relationships are with his friend Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) and with his "girlfriend" Vic (Laura Drasbæk). When a Serbian drug-courier comes to Copenhagen and Frank fails to deliver money to him, he gets into a debt swirl.

Frank is portrayed as an ordinary guy, who is a juvenile child under his hard shelf. He even goes to get money from his mother when he needs to pay his debts. All the conversations he has with his friend Tonny are about blow jobs, strippers and prostitutes. The dialog is sharp and it's well made to feel like common everyday chat.

The film is very fast-paced and it's colored with some aggressive punk music, which I enjoyed a lot. It added a great element to Frank's life full of loneliness and despair. Pusher is a great description of the underworld in Copenhagen, Denmark. It's excessive realism and doesn't add any glamor to the lives of the junkies. It deals with the problems that are out there and with us every day, no matter where you live.

This movie blew me and my friends away 10 years ago. This rock steady and realistic tale about real criminals, not the typical American teen age- BS. These people are real, that's as simple as it gets. The docu-kind of outlook fits this movie perfect.

Someone was complaining how he couldn't sit through this movie because he didn't understand why Frankie made the choices he did. That's the point, there is no reason in real life. People make choices because they are bored or simply don't want to think about life outside the carnival. What is a family, Volvo or a house in the suburbs to a guy, who still at about 35-40 goes out clubbing and gets hi on crank and what-not everyday. These human fates don't need explanation. Perhaps I've been too close to need an explanation. One thing is for sure, these guys have made a great movie that has become a legend within certain groups of people. I guess the point of the movie was very clear in the end. Where does a man go, who keeps pushing the envelope day after day? The answer is - nowhere... Learn your lessons people, no more explanations needed.

Absolutely fabulous, that's all I can say... And I won't say too much about the movie, just that it kicks ass. Definitely one of the most enticing criminal stories in the last 20 years.

Although i've heard only good things about Pusher, it took me several years to pick it up. The result was surprisingly good.

The movie is shot almost as a documentary, which is well suited for the subject it depicts. Unlike hip-hop videos advertising gangster lifestyle, Pusher shows us the reality of a low level drug dealer. There is no glamor, but rather hard labor without strict working hours providing questionable financial gain.

Serbian gangsters are depicted rather realistically, presumably due to Slavko Labović'S experience as bouncer and mingling in the appropriate milieu.

Despite its independent funding, Pusher is rubbing shoulders with the best gangster movies of all times.

Quentin Tarantino fan?, Then watch this. Pusher has it all, drugs, violence, sex and great dialogue, it doesn't hold anything back. It's the first film by director Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Drive.) and arguably his best.

The film is shot in a documentary style, in this film we follow small time drug dealer frank who is busted by the cops for trying to sell drugs, as a result of losing his drugs franks is now in debt to a local gangster named Milo, he has one week to come up with Milos money, during this week we see the desperate levels Frank stoops to in order to secure the money. What makes the film is the interesting characters, Frank, Franks girlfriend Vic, Franks friend Tonny, gangster Milo and Milo's henchman Radovan, each character brings something completely different to the film, you will find yourself favouring one of them.

The dialogue contains a lot of extreme racial slurs, and brutal violence, it makes a Quentin Tarantino film look like a PG 13. Overall the film is a fantastic watch, Kim Bodnia (Frank), Laura Drasbaek (Vic), Zlatko Buric (Milo), Slavko Labovic (Radovan) and Mads Mikkelsen (Tonny) are brilliant in this film.

What I love about this film is that it has no good guy, some people will side with Frank, some will side with Milo. Pusher is raw, edgy and most of all, entertaining.

Wow, I've just watched it. Probably, it'd be better to just lay back, think about the movie and, only after cooling down on emotions, review it.

But not this one.

"Pusher" tells us the story of, perhaps, the worst week of Frank's life, a 'middleweight' dealer caught in an unpayable debt to pay to Eastern European type mafia. And as his story unfolds, your blood pressure will rise just like the incredible tension increasing throughout the movie. No wonder, the debt grows higher and higher every day. Will Frank be able to ever repay it? Its just like the tag-line says:

"You've got no chance! Grab it!"

The fresh thing about this movie is that it shows what is actually happening somewhere in the middle of the 'food-chain' of drug dealing. Not at the top, covered by movies such as Casino, Scarface, Blow, or any other high budget movie made in Hollywood. After all Copenhagen is just not a world of amazing luxury and incredible piles of coke here and there. But the movie doesn't follow another cliché' either. It doesn't show us the bottom, where junkies scavenge on each other, sell their mothers for a gram of heroin, a topic which is usually covered by some low-budget off-movies.

Pusher is the ultimate, pure, refined truth about drug dealing. I have a personal experience, myself being for a time an immigrant into Denmark (I've never been a criminal or ever wanted to be, though, just to clarify that matter). And some guys, that I've came across upon coming here, went into this businesses and well, they all hit rock bottom. OK, the movie is hard to get into with its dramatic realism, but I assure you: this movie is as close to coarse truth and gritty reality as it gets!