Review of Pusher III (2005) by Robert H — 05 May 2015

In the third (and final) installment of Nicolas Winding Refn's PUSHER trilogy, he takes a look at the Serbian drug lord from the previous two films, Milo. Taking place over the course of a day, it follows Milo as he has to balance preparing for his daughter's birthday celebration and try to work out a drug deal involving ecstasy pills (that he thought were going to be heroin).

It's also revealed in the film's first scene that he's a member of Narcotics Anonymous. What makes the film, or at least Milo, compelling is the way he balance his personal and professional lives.

He also struggles with addiction as he peddles drugs to other people. These discrepancies are what make him a complex and interesting character despite being surrounded with a bunch of one-note gangster/pusher types.

Perhaps it's because I was a bit burned out from the previous two, but I found that this one didn't do enough different to make me really care about the story. Sure, Milo was interesting enough but by this point it felt like Refn was simply going through the motions.

At times, this felt like a slower, feature length version of a rather famous scene in Goodfellas: the one where Henry is high on coke and goes back and forth between his house and several other locations as he cooks and picks up guns, drugs, etc.

Still, the PUSHER III does have one scene towards the end where Milo disposes of some bodies that was able to capture some of the brutality and gruesomeness shown in the previous two films. From a technical standpoint, the film is done in a handheld, documentary style that aims, and mostly succeeds at, capturing a day in the life of a gangster.

Acting, from what I could tell, seemed to be pretty good or at least on par with the other two films in the trilogy. The score this time wasn't as memorable, but there were a couple key moments that were punctuated with a sound resembling the Hans Zimmer "bwwaaaaaaa" that has become common-place in movie trailers.

Overall, I didn't find this film as interesting as PUSHER II, but it still was a well-made film and I'd be hard-pressed to call it "bad." If you've seen the other two, by all means check this out.

If not, I'd stick with the first two (especially the second one).