Pusher

I found this movie by accident. Traveling through Netflixs' library the trailer for this movie caught my eye before a movie I rented (and long since forgot). I've been sitting on this one to share for almost a year so I'm excited to see what you guys think. It's in dutch so be forewarned, ya gotta read.

The premise is simple, but not very original. Frank is a small time drug dealer. On the lower rungs of the drug trade, Frank is pretty much a street slinger (hense the title). Frank isn't a very good dealer. He's back some money and sets up a big heroin deal with a friend, when he goes to pick up the goods from Milo, he doesn't have enough cash on him to pay for it all. Milo agrees to front him the drugs, assured he's going to get all the money owed to him.

Frank fucks up the deal completely and is in a horrific money hole that sends what life he has into hell.

From 1996, this was writer/director Nicolas Winding Refns' first movie. It first started as a short film for Nicolas to get into a Dutch film school. He didn't get in and ended up finding about a million bucks to turn it into a feature film. It's done almost entirely with hand held cameras, lending a documentary look. There's no glitz or glamor about drugs, just a sink hole that keeps getting deeper and deeper. It's really less about drugs and more about human desperation.

Also watch the special features. Pusher was a huge hit for Refn, it gave him the opportunity to make another movie, Fear X. Which tanked horrifically. The financial burden was put on Refn and his business partner, putting them millions into personal debt. The special feature tells his tale of taking the gamble of getting funding to make Pusher 2 to help get out of debt and to make Pusher 3 to get entirely out of debt. The feature is almost as long as the movie and continues on to the DVD of Pusher 2.

I watched the two sequels shortly after watching this, 2 being my favorite (I like the Tonny character a lot) and 3rd being I think the worst. It was a surprise treat for me, I hope you like it too. As another bonus, Pusher (again with a trailer on the disc) led me to another amazing movie, Dead Man's Shoes. I know Arjue saw that one and it blew him away too.

Next Pick Preview: YellerDog selects "A Simple Plan"

I'll buy this next week, and I'm gonna make an effort to keep up with the club movies this time.

PS Dead Man's Shoes = fucking awesome, and I'm considering making it my pick.

I was hoping you would.

Going to try to catch this next week.

So I just watched this movie. I enjoyed it a lot.

I really dig the way the dialog is written, conversational but not overly revealing about the characters. You get a genuine taste of their personlities with out the unrealistic insight into their pasts that you so often get in other movies. It really adds to the realism, when you see Frank and his friend talking in the car it just looks like they filmed them having a real conversation.

My favorite scene is probably When Frank goes absolutely ape shit on his friend in the bar. His facial expression afterwards shows that he felt very betrayed and hurt by his friend giving him up, as opposed to just being really hot headed. It really humanised the character which made it much easier for me to empathize with him.

The acting was dead on all round, with the hand held look adding to the realistic atmosphere of the film. The soundtrack is really sporadic, infact most of the music comes from the environment rather than movie score. Its not the most original movie premise but because of this brutal realism it still comes off really fresh.

I think the movies biggest strength is its incredible ending. It was left way open without it feeling like a cheap cliffhanger, which is not an easy thing to do. Either way, you can't really help but feel that no matter what Frank does, he's fucked.

Overall, I think its a really solid film and would gladly recommend it to my friends. Good pick Rumpy!

Is it really in dutch? Made in Denmark I believe (Kim Bodnia and Mads is danish atleast). Never saw this or any of the sequels even though my friends talked about it all the time like ten years ago, I will some day.

The language is Danish (with some oddly sporadic english) so i think you're right.

I had a feeling you'd like this arjue. I came across this by accident and really liked it. Like we both said, the premise isn't original, but the execution (in all areas) is what makes it stand out and so good. You need to check out part 2, it's great too.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie from Denmark before this either.

I'm having a hell of a time tracking this movie down.

The only place I've seen that has it is Netflix.