Pusher III - L'ange de la mort

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

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

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.

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.

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.