Mads Mikkelsen has a tough go of it in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy
THE PUSHER TRILOGY (Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996, 2004, 2005)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
April 26 & 27, May 4
Series runs April 19 – May 16
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy is a gritty, violent, brutal, and brilliant look at the devastation wrought by drugs. In Pusher (1996), Kim Bodnia stars as Frank, a small-time hood who loses both the money and the drugs when a deal goes bad. Over the course of a week, he grows more and more desperate as druglord Milo (Zlatko Buric) and his henchman, Radovan (Slavko Labovic), grow more and more impatient, preparing to do some serious damage to Frank. Pusher II: With Blood on My Hands (2004) focuses on Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen), Frank’s former partner who has just been released from prison. Addled by a beating he took, Tonny gets lost in a drug haze, trying to prove himself a worthy criminal to his big-time father, the Duke (Leif Sylvester Petersen), while also refusing to accept that he might be the father of Charlotte’s (Anne Sorensen) child. With the whole world crashing in on him, Tonny goes to extreme measures that affect everybody in his sphere. The gritty, powerful trilogy concludes with Refn’s masterwork, Pusher III: I’m the Angel of Death (2005), this time with Milo in the forefront.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy concludes with Milo (Zlatko Buric) taking center stage in Pusher III: I’m the Angel of Death
While preparing for his daughter’s (Marinela Dekic) twenty-fifth birthday party, he discovers that a major score has changed significantly, and he is forced to deal directly with a new generation of drug dealers — and by himself, because his cooking has made his crew sick. Shuttling between the ever-worsening situation, NA meetings, and his daughter’s party, Milo is faced with some deadly choices. Buric is spectacular as the aging druglord who does not like what he sees as he takes stock of his life. While the first two films feature hard-driving punk music, classical music slows things down in the far more contemplative conclusion. To add to the remarkable realism, many of the supporting actors were actual criminals. The grand finale is unforgettable, a multilayered, deeply philosophical, and extremely violent statement on the nature of drugs and the men and women addicted to that life. You can see all three films April 26-27 and May 4 in Film Forum’s Trilogies series, which continues through May 16 with other three-packs from Mark Donskoy, John Ford, Fritz Lang, Carol Reed, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and Krzysztof Kieslowski, among many others.