Pusher is the first film of the Pusher series, 1996 By Nicolas Winding Refn
For those unfamiliar with the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn who went on to direct Drive, the 2011 action drama film starring Ryan Gosling. You are in for a treat.
His first feature film, part of a series, is a 1996 film called Pusher. It is one of the most influential foreign films of all time, and I would liken Nicolas Winding Refn as the Danish Martin Scorsese.
Summary
The plot of the first Pusher film revolves around gangster Frank and his associate Tony, both drug dealers.
Frank ends up in a considerable amount of debt after a drug deal goes wrong, and Frank has to toss the drugs into the lake.
Which, in return, he now owes Serbian gangster Milo the money for tossed drugs. The movie is a day-to-day account of Frank struggling to pay his debt back to Milo.
Towards the movie’s end, the audience is left on the edge of their seat as Frank tries to flee the city from Milo’s henchmen attempting to kill him.
Review
In my opinion, this movie, along with the other films in the trilogy, was one of the most realistic and gruesome gangster flicks of all time.
The thing about Pusher, which makes it so real, is this film helps set the tone for how gangster films should look. The movie’s intensity and the fact that they were able to use a mixture of real actors and non-actors and make this look more like a documentary than a film sets it apart from the rest.
There are a lot of themes within this franchise, like father and son duos and fatherhood in general, within the second and third Pusher films. This is a gangster flick on steroids with some scenes with very gruesome shots.
I will give this film a rare five out of five stars and recommend anybody who loves neo-noir and has a taste for nostalgic 90s gangster flicks.
(Pusher (1996) Is available for free on Tubi along with the entire franchise)
