The first of a three-part series which detail intersecting characters selling drugs on the streets of Denmark. At least I’m pretty sure it’s from Denmark. (They make fun of Swedes.) We follow Frank, a generally unlikable low-level thug with hints that he might have some residual humanity, as he moves through one week–and follow at the most literal level, at times the camera jostling along right over his shoulder as he pushes his way through rave crowds, into bars, and in physical confrontations. (By confrontation I mean something a bit more extravagantly, ‘though never exuberantly, violent.)
I was impressed. The film can be quite funny but never self-consciously, ironically, never with the kind of smart-ass wit playing at tough guy patter–but real nasty guy patter. And its bleak, fairly vicious tone resembles Richard Stark’s Parker novels (captured in the great Point Blank) more than Elmore Leonard or Tarantino. Reviews claim parts 2 and 3 get even better, and the cumulative effect is even stronger. I’ll let you know.
By the by, the new Bond villain (Mads Mikkelsen) turns up as Tonny, a cheese-eating bald punk hanger-on, who takes some vicious beatings here (and, I hear, in the next film). He’s damn good. Hell, everyone is very good.
They showed these over two nights here in LA and I missed them, but I definitely want to see them on disc. There’s also a documentary about the filmmakers trying to get financing and get the films made which made it sound like they were treading in the same legally murky waters as the characters in the films. Maybe not killing people or selling drugs, but you know, Eastern European stuff: Riding subways and spitting and the like.
Pusher II is an even stronger installment. The same strengths: a visceral sense of the experiences of the protagonist (in this film we follow along with Tonny, as he gets out of prison and tries to get what passed for a life together again, while also getting back into the good graces of his more prestigious and far more dangerous gangster father “The Duke”), captured with a keen camera eye and smart dialogue/scenarios that never show off but never fail to impress.
But this one was also often far funnier, with a deep bleak sense of the absurd. There’s a great bit early on where Tonny and a pal (named either 0 [with the slash through it] or Theta) watch crappy porn, Tonny all the while spinning his nunchaku until his friend yanks them away angrily. (Tonny does like his porn; the film carefully and almost cruelly delineates the links between his endless porn-speak and his literal, as well as his multiple facets of figurative, impotence.)
But I would emphasize: it’s not played for giggles, and even when funny it’s a dark, sick, Beckett via Selby form of humor. And it’s often surprisingly moving, as Mads Mikkelsen (playing Tonny) somehow engenders our sympathy without ever softening the character’s extreme stupidity, cupidity, addiction, and brutality.
And the film has another wonderful, ambiguous close; both films leave the protagonist seemingly doomed but on the run, looking about.
I am now firmly hooked and can’t wait to see the finale, which some call the finest of the lot.
I didn’t dig Pusher as much as you but it was tightly controlled and well acted. You grow to care about Frank (though the premise surrounding the drug deal gone sour could be seen a mile away). Is it just me or is this film more than a little homoerotic? Man, Mads Mikkelsen has gained a few pounds since he did this?
Saw the final film, which focuses on a ‘minor’ character from the earlier films, the Croatian (?) drug dealer/entrepeneur/amateur chef Milo (the excellent Zlatko Buric). Like all of the films, it’s a tad predictable in its plotting; like all of the films, it’s directed with a precise fury and energy that is damn impressive, regardless.
This film amps up the bleak black comedy — Milo starts the day in Narcotics Anonymous (a good joke that gains some emotional heft, despite its rather obvious portent as a marker of inevitable drug abuse later in the film), as he prepares to cook a big party dinner for his demanding daughter. Mostly, we follow Milo along, through a couple of deals, screwing up the meal, trying to be a good small businessman attending to his family and screwed about by other thuggish members of his profession.
There’s a very intriguing undercurrent of stories and significations regarding the new Europe, as most every character comes from somewhere else, and is speaking Danish with accents that confuse the other immigrants. But, while significant, the ethnic tensions are part of the context rather than ever emerging more forcefully in the plot.
It’s more violent and much funnier than the other films; it manages to develop some of the same emotional connections with these pretty despicable figures. However, it also seems less challenging, less interesting in its conclusion, than particularly number II. Still, recommended–the whole trilogy is pretty good.