Pusher 3 (2005)

Director:

Nicolas Winding Refn

Writer:

Nicolas Winding Refn (writer)

Release Date:

2 September 2005 (Denmark)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Drama | Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

I'm the Angel of Death.

Plot:

In this third installment of the 'Pusher' trilogy, we follow Milo ('Zlatko Buric'), the drug lord from the two first films...

Plot Keywords:

Heroin | Ecstasy | Pusher | Drugs | Drug Lord

Cast

Zlatko Buric	...	Milo
Marinela Dekic	...	Milena
Ilyas Agac	...	Little Mohammed
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Vanja Bajicic	...	Branko
Gitte Dan	...	Lis
Dan Dommer	...	Gamle
Ramadan Huseini	...	Rexho
Levino Jensen	...	Mike
Slavko Labovic	...	Radovan
Sven Erik Eskeland Larsen	...	Svend
Kujtim Loki	...	Luan
Marek Magierecki	...	Mitja
Kurt Nielsen	...	Kusse-Kurt
Susan Petersen	...	Marie
Karsten Schrøder	...	Røde
Hakan Turan	...	Ali

Also Known As:

I'm the Angel of Death: Pusher III (International: English title)

Runtime:

90 min | Chile:104 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:

Denmark

Language:

Serbian | Danish | Polish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Denmark:15 | Norway:18 | Finland:K-18 | Germany:18 | UK:18 | France:-16 | Australia:R | New Zealand:R18

Filming Locations:

Copenhagen, Denmark

Company:

Det Danske Filminstitut

Trivia:

Just like Pusher (1996) and Pusher II (2004), all the scenes were shot in order.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Milo is speaking at his daughters birthday party, the type of glass he is holding changes twice.

Quotes:

Milo: [at a narcotics anonymous meeting] My name is Milo. I'm a drug addict.

Movie Connections:

References King Kong (1933)

Long day's journey into an even longer night

It must be hell being Milo. This film starts off as one of those "everything-goes-wrong"- movies that were so in vogue in the mid-nineties – although the focus here is not some spectacular heist but a routine heroin deal, all in a day's work for aging mid-level Serb gangster Milo.

In a way, the plot (not the film) starts out resembling that part in Goodfellas, where Ray Liotta has to keep his mind on a lot of different things at the same time and ends up being busted.

Milo also has a lot of things to mind – the heroin shipment from Holland, the preparations for his daughter's twenty-fifth birthday, keeping his NA appointments and actually staying off blow and tar for his daughter's sake as he's promised himself. The fact that he has to cook the whole birthday dinner for a party of 50 himself, and that his daughter is a full- blown Serbian bitch, surely doesn't help matters much.

Then there are some unforeseen complications which I will not discuss, but that seem to be evidence that the gods or somebody must be against poor Milo. Where most of the problems facing Pusher II:s anti-hero Tönnie seems to stem from his own weakness (and thus are perfectly believable), the combination of shortcomings that Milo faces seems a bit more far- fetched.

But anyway, that doesn't make this film less worth viewing. Just like the two other parts of the trilogy, it's a dark, depressing story full of characters and surroundings that seem perfectly real in every sense. The Scandinavian criminal underworld, with its Serbs, Albanians, Arabs and natives. Copenhagen is in many ways the heaviest of the capitals of Scandinavia, and has been rife with organized and not-so-organized crime since well back in the seventies.

One thing has to be said about the main character, Milo. The way he's portrayed in this film, I found myself having to remind myself of the Milo of the first Pusher film, the smiling gang boss having his henchman torturing small-time dealer Franke with electric wires. Whatever happens to Milo in this film, he's deserved it. Just keep that in mind.