Pusher III
Pusher III
| 22 August 2005 (USA)
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Milo is aging, he is planning his daughter's 25th birthday, and his shipment of heroin turns out to be 10,000 pills of ecstasy. When Milo tries to sell the pills anyway, all Hell breaks loose and his only chance is to ask for help from his ex-henchman and old friend Radovan.

Reviews
Bessie Smyth

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

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Nicole

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

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Sarita Rafferty

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

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Brooklynn

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

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samuel_ronalds

"Pusher III" is the final installment of the gritty and often bleak trilogy. The film maintains the conventions so well established thus far - a commitment to realism, subdued plots, and strong characters brought to life by intelligent writing and refined acting. It also maintains the same visual style as established in the first film and improved in the second - a graceful yet documentary-like style of camera-work, coupled with tasteful framing. Like its predecessors, "Pusher III" utilises a character-driven plot, and focuses on the tension surrounding the main character, who is Milo - the drug lord central to Frank's deterioration. At first, this seems like a strange decision, and one that is somewhat hard to take seriously - however, the trilogy's trademark writing, of inferred depth and subtle drama, manages to cast Milo in a light that, as a supporting character in the previous films, we haven't yet seen him in. The film focuses on Milo's struggles with drug addiction, as well as his efforts maintain a balanced family life in the face of his criminal work. Unfortunately, there are two drawbacks regarding plot points that ignite the film's narrative. The first regards the usual subplot of missing or owed money - this section of the film's narrative is initiated, yet again, by a drug bust going faulty. It seems at this point in the trilogy to be a somewhat cheap excuse for implementing tension within the criminal aspects of the plot. However, the decision to initiate this subplot does, in fact, pay off later on in the film. The second drawback is the initiation of the second subplot - Milo's relapse into drug use. This is started when a particularly unlikable character from the second film pays Milo a visit, and whimsically hands over some heroin before leaving. Why he would hand over such an expensive drug to someone he has no plans of reconnecting with is bizarre, accentuated by the fact that this character is never to be seen again - this particular plot point feels like an arbitrary interjection for the sake of kick-starting the suspense within the film. However, once these subplots are started, they work beautifully - they converge into the singular and central plot of the film, focusing on Milo's increased burnout and dependency on substances. We watch him become subordinate to people he dislikes, and lie to his daughter in order to conceal his habits. There is still one more weakness in the sequences of events, in which Milo is moved to kill a Polish pimp. It is not this act itself that is somewhat faulty, but the specific event that spurs this into motion - the pimp's prostitute attempts to escape, and she does so because the pimp momentarily runs to the bathroom to vomit, leaving her free to make a getaway attempt. This feels like yet another arbitrary moment written in for the sake of the plot, yet its snag is minute. While we are on the topic of this particular scene, it's perhaps worth mentioning that, during a moment wherein the Polish pimp pours boiling water over the prostitute's arm, the actress's screams are all too fake - this, too, is only a minor drawback. However, what follows is the film's most rewarding scene - a lengthy sequence involving Milo and his former henchman, familiar from the first "Pusher" film, dispose of the body. This scene involves the men hanging up the body, draining it of blood, and gutting it. This sequence seems all too real, and while it may seem to contribute nothing to the narrative, it is one of the most telling scenes. Throughout the film Milo is depicted as losing more and more self control, culminating in him murdering two men purely out of rage, and it is during the sequence in which the dead Polish man is drawn and gutted that Milo's final mental state is on subtle display. He is careless - helping himself to the victim's watches, almost forgetting to wear gloves, and picking up his coat instead of his apron. Throughout the scene his expression seems blank and pitiless, and it is apparent that he has reached a point of mental defeat - while he still seeks to avoid the reparations of his acts, his demeanour gives the impression of a complete lack of care. Milo has spent the whole film being stressed, and now he is completely burnt out, and sees no desire in stressing any further, and no reason to stress anyway. This isn't, however, a liberating notion in any regard. This demonstrates another element characteristic to the "Pusher" trilogy - of nuanced narrative reinventing. Whereas the first in the series was a crime-thriller, the second film balanced this with the presence of a family-drama. "Pusher III" maintains both these films and instills them with the overarching traits of a psychological-drama. This is accentuated by the use of music - the abrasive rock instrumentals are entirely gone, and are replaced almost entirely by ambient pieces, with the exception of a couple of transgressive industrial pieces. Much like the second "Pusher" film, the music is paired exceptionally well with the visuals and narrative, however it does possess the tendency to lend an easy and perhaps shallow method of displaying visceral, psychological scenes regarding Milo - these scenes will often feature slow-motion shots of the character staring into space, often out of a window, accompanied by an ambient piece. While these scenes are aesthetically meriting, they do little to display what is actually going on in Milo's head. Despite this, the film's narrative manages to pull off its slow-burning approach, and appears to be the most subdued film of the series. Overall, "Pusher III" isn't as strong as its immediate predecessor, but is still a worthy film of the franchise that upholds its defining traits while still pushing the narrative approach in new directions.

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sam-1051

Come on - Pusher 3 is a perfect and very fitting end to an amazing trilogy of crime films that any self-respecting film fan will have seen. The performance of Buric as Milo is a masterful and surely one of the best in the trilogy. Refn never patronises his audience and always delivers. If more people could get beyond the subtitles they would be amazed at what they find. Pusher was a seminal film and casts a long shadow - however, Pusher 2 and 3 are very different films in terms of styling and shows a Refn maturing as a director and writer. It will be fascinating to see what he does after the Pusher series - word is that he is going to do a Viking picture with Mads Mikkelsen. That sounds pretty damn interesting to me, and proves that great European directors can create a body of work despite the difficulties they face with financing etc these days.

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Ulrik Sander-Pedersen

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

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Claus Reinhold

Well, well, well. What can I say? Either you love this film or you hate it. I'm not going to write about the story - it's been done already I can see. All there is to say about this film is, that in my opinion, it's fantastic!!! Do NOT expect a high-octane action flick. You'll be very disappointed. It's more of a slow, quiet drama, with a main character that's SO fascinating, you can't take you're eyes off him. Zlatko Buric is so good in PUSHER 3. The end-scene/shot says it all - I can watch the film over and over again just for that scene/shot. The whole film is in that shot! Beautiful!The PUSHER-trilogy could not end better, than with PUSHER 3. So, just watch it, experience it, see it, hear it.

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