Pusher III

Fans of The Sopranos take note: Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher films are right up there with the best in their up close and personal portrayal of everyday gangsterism – and you don’t need to have seen any one of them to get the next. The third and best of the series focuses on Serbian drug kingpin Milo, a bit-part baddie in the original film. “Five days into rehab from his heroin habit… Milo has a lot on his plate. In addition to mounting a dinner for 50 to celebrate the 25th birthday of daughter Milena, he’s orchestrating a complicated drug deal… When, instead of heroin his shipment is 10,000 ecstasy pills, Milo is perplexed by the new drug and calls in former bodyguard and current restaurateur Radovan to help him… Refn has made a nervous, absorbing film that plays like a feature-length version of the paranoia-drenched pasta cooking scene from Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas… Most engaging is the way Refn has woven dark comedy into the proceedings, balancing that with the unconscious moral choices his protagonists must take at seemingly every turn.” — Eddie Cockrell, Variety