Pusher III - L'ange de la mort

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.

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.

i actually went through the registration process on here solely to come on and defend against some of the attacks i saw of this film. i watched all three parts, and personally i felt this installment was a perfect and fitting end to the three. whether or not it portrays the drug underworld of that particular region to the tee is really not that important. it is a very human portrayal of a man who others likely see as inhuman, and without talking about the plot at all (don't want to do a whole spoiler thing)is a film that possesses a quiet, dark, and stark beauty. i have no possible clue how someone could like the other two and not the third, but as someone who watched them all, if you've seen the others, i would strongly recommend you watch this one as well. it is both haunting and strangely heartening, and you won't be disappointed.

Storyline: 10 years have passed since the first PUSHER movie. Big-time drug dealer Milo (Zlatko Buric) is stressed. Milo attempts to quit heroin by attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings, a shipment supposed to contain brown heroin turns out to contain 10.000 ecstasy-pills, and it's his daughter Milena's (Marinela Dekic) 25th birthday, and Milo has promised to cook food for her 50 guests. Little Muhammed (Ilyas Agac) leaves with the ecstasy-pills to sell them for Milo, but soon Milo can't find him, and the Albanian-Danish gangsters who smuggled the ecstasy-pills into Denmark are stressing Milo for their money. Conidentially Milo meets Kusse-Kurt (Kurt Nielsen) who slips him a small amount of heroin. Soon Milo's finds himself in a spiral of bad decisions smoking heroin, sniffing speed and murdering gangsters. Is Milo's drug empire finally crumbling?

Each installment of Nicolas Winding Refn's docu-drama trilogy tells a story from Copenhagen's underworld, but from three completely different protagonists' POV's. PUSHER tells the story of middle-level pusher Frank (Kim Bodnia), PUSHER 2 tells the story of low-level criminal Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen), and PUSHER 3 tells the story of high-level pusher Milo (Zlatko Buric). The clear message of the trilogy is: you live by the sword, you die by the sword. All three movies end on very ambivalent notes. Frank gets killed... or perhaps he doesn't. Tonny breaks loose of his dead-end lifestyle... or perhaps he doesn't. And Milo's drug empire crumbles... or perhaps it doesn't. That's how life is. It doesn't just stop. Each movie keeps evolving in your head even after they've ended, similar to John Cassavetes' movies or Danny Boyles' 1996 masterpiece TRAINSPOTTING. It's certainly something one doesnn't experience in braindead Hollywood blockbusters nowadays.

Nicolas Winding Refn's PUSHER trilogy is obviously inspired by John Cassevetes' movie-making style as they are more instinctive than intellectual, because the audience goes through the same turbulent emotions as Milo, whether it's melancholy, joy or bitterness. It's not a very fast-paced movie (except for a few breath-taking scenes), but Refn manages to maintain an uneasy tension that keeps the audience on the edge of the seats. It reflects Refn's love for his (three-dimensional) characters. Refn's 95% non-Danish dialog (the cast mainly consists of immigrants) is somewhere in-between Quentin Tarantino and John Cassavetes: very self-conscious, yet also natural and realistic. The foreign languages only adds to the mysteriousness and danger of these immigrant gangsters.

The cast primarily consists of unprofessional actors, some even with semi-criminal backgrounds, and, naturally the great Zlatko Buric whom Refn has called "the new Dirch Passer". Buric brilliantly brings out Milo's two-face ambivalence and vulnerability of an aging man in a constantly changing milieu. Refn gets performances from the unprofessional cast that range from acceptable to great -- they all add to the realness and authenticity. Many of them, of course, more or less play their real life-themselves. Many of the PUSHER characters keep re-occurring throughout the trilogy. For example: Milo (Zlatko Buric) has a supporting-role in PUSHER, a cameo-role in PUSHER 2 and the main-role in PUSHER 3. Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) has a supporting-role in PUSHER and the main-role in PUSHER 2. Kusse-Kurt (Kurt Nielsen) has a supporting-role in PUSHER 2 and a cameo-role in PUSHER 3. This provides a feeling of continuity to the trilogy's milieu.

Peter Peter (ex-member of the legendary Danish rock-group Sort Sol) has again composed the music in collaboration with Kyed. Although I preferred the 80's-synth-inspired score in PUSHER 2, this time it's effective, bleak and minimal. For example: When Kusse-Kurt slips Milo a small amount of heroin in the grill-bar, shortly after a disturbing, noisy, distorted guitar-riff begins clashing repeatedly with 4 second intervals. It underlines Milo's desperate mind-state. One minute later Milo walks into the restroom to smoke the heroin, where the clashing guitar sound slowly transforms into a beautiful, melancholic piano-tune to underline the heroin's effect on Milo. It's a good example of subtle use of music as a movie-language.

Refn's love for so-called trashy genre-flicks shows through-out his work. Although his movies (the PUSHER trilogy, BLEEDER and FEAR X) are more art-house than genre-pieces, they are loaded with references to his favorite obscure movies, most noticeably in BLEEDER. But also PUSHER 3 contains a subtle reference, probably not known to most audiences. The climax-scene in-which Radovan (Slavko Labovic) slices up the body hanging form the ceiling is an obvious homage to one of Refn's favorite-movies Paul Morrissey's FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN from 1973 starring Udo Kier. FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN is a an original twist on the Frankenstein franchise with necrophiliac undertones. Refn borrows his climax from the climax of FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN: the music, the chains slowly pulling the body up, the depraved depiction of human-flesh etc. As they say, the best directors borrow from their favorite-directors.

Although all three installment are semi-masterpieces I personally prefer PUSHER 3 by a few inches. It's more honest, more disturbing, and more experimental. I have experienced the first-mentioned first-hand, as I spend years in the drug milieu. Refn's PUSHER trilogy is a street-level counterpart to Martin Scorsese's gangster trilogy (consisting of MEAN STREETS from 1973, GOODFELLAS from 1990, and CASINO from 1995), because both trilogies portray the crime underworld from low-level, middle-level and high-level gangsters' POV's. I highly recommend PUSHER 3 especially if you enjoyed its successors, although, the re-occurring characters aside, it's not completely necessary to watch the prequels before experiencing this gem, but I recommend doing so. Watch it! 9/10

Pusher 3

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (2005)

"Hvem jeg er? F*cking King of Copenhagen!"

This is the final part of Nicolas Winding Refn's "Pusher Trilogy" – a movie series about the life of three different persons with a relationship to one another. In the first of three movies Pusher (1996) we follow the drug dealer Frank and his problems when he drops a big deal. In the same movie we meet Frank's friend the bum Tonny and Frank's supplier Milo. In Pusher II (2004) we followed Tonny's life after he comes out of jail, and in Pusher 3 it is Milo's character that is the leading character.

The movie follows one day in Milo's life. He is helping planning his grownup daughter's birthday party and he has a major drug deal going on. But something in the deal goes wrong when Milo is tricked by his "partner". Milo now stands between the men he owes money and the man who owes him money. To solve all his problems Milo has to make some drastic and dramatic decisions and do some gruesome things. This includes among other things involving his old friend Radovan, known from "Pusher".

Pusher 3 is a great finish to Refn's series about the Copenhagen drug world. Zlatko Buric is amazing in his first leading role, as the old drug dealer/supplier Milo. If you liked his role and performance in Pusher, you will love him here! The movie has some very disturbing scenes and the cinematography helps the movie to appear very realistic. This movie shows a scary environment, interesting and frightening characters and contains a disturbing story.

8/10