By the third entry in the Pusher series, there’s an assumed narrative trajectory and familar story pattern: the camera follows the protagonist as they slowly start to get in over their heads with deals and debts. Yet it’s interesting across the three movies how the tone is still uniquely set by the lead character and performer. As the drug kingpin that applied the pressure to the protagonist in the first film and appeared in the second, Milo played by Zlatko Buric is the focus of Pusher III: I Am The Angel Of Death (2005). It’s almost a sick joke in the cold open to see Milo attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in the first scene. Yet the one day structure of the film sees Milo juggling not just another commitment to sobriety but cooking for his headstrong daughter Milena’s (Marinela Dekic) wedding reception/birthday party at the same time as he is handling a major ecstasy deal across two parties, all of which results in a stressful build up of decisions and incidents. Yet the character of Milo, older and prone to relapsing, is different to the younger protagonists in the earlier films; there’s almost a point where he becomes merely a spectator to the havoc that is his daily life. Director-writer Nicolas Winding Refn’s style keeps the semi-documentary aesthetic of the previous films and overall, everything feels grounded and real in contrast to the criminal worlds represented by someone like Guy Ritchie. That and the film’s darkly comic tone at times distinguishes it as well as its focus on cross-national backgrounds in the different ethnicities working in this Copenhagen set criminal underworld. Zlatko Buric is great in the lead, adding a wearied flipside to his garrulous air, and there are some familiar returning faces from the other Pusher films (Slavko Labovic as the enforcer Radovan). There’s a slower, atmospheric tone to this last film of the series, plunging towards a grotesque, blood-soaked climax. Available to stream on Stan. Recommended.
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