Pusher III - L'ange de la mort

'The third part of Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy is clearly the best. With each part, Refn's approach becomes more daring and complex. However talented his debut from 1996 was, and however innovative the second part, this third part has a charged emotionalism that is difficult to beat, along with tension and courage. I'm the Angel of Death - Pusher III focuses on the Serbian drugs baron Milo. In earlier parts, he was an extra, a feared power lurking in the background. He is not some grand godfather, and as a middle-ranking boss he has also been on the decline for some time, yet he should not be underestimated as an adversary. At first, he seems to allow himself to be trifled with. His spoiled daughter is very demanding in everything on her birthday. His gangster sidekicks have been put out of action by food poisoning - as a result of Milo's cooking. Albanian crooks cheekily try to take over his dealing turf. He obediently attends meetings of Addicts Anonymous, afraid of returning to his old ways. But don't trifle with Milo. Or you will come to a bloody end. With his trilogy, and certainly with this last part, Refn has not only succeeded in renewing the gangster genre, but also providing it with a new geography. The American mean streets have been convincingly replaced by the multi-ethnic pavements of a Europe that has not yet been given the profile it deserves.'

quoted from: film festival Rotterdam (2006), GJZ

I couldn't agree more. Go see this film. Sharing 'downfall' as the central theme, it's better than Scarface and even more realistic about non-Hollywood gangster life than the Sopranos.

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.

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 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.