Fantasia CR: Pusher 3 : I’m The Angel Of Death

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn returns with the third installment in his celebrated Pusher trilogy.

Heroin peddler Milo encounters a series of violent setbacks over the span of 24 hours that threaten to cut off both his daughter’s 25th birthday celebrations and the breath in his lungs.

Pusher 3 is in many ways the opposite of the relentless punishment that defined the start of this series. Much more meditative, P3 begins in relatively mundane fashion and builds to it’s inevitably (this IS Pusher after all) violent climax. The film’s legitimacy lies in the way it’s characters treat the mayhem that surrounds them with a matter-of-fact blandness, as though their dystopian existence is life’s only truth.

P3 offers us a glimpse of a day in the life of these immensely interesting characters rather than suggesting their story can be summed up in a couple of hours. Zlatco Buric (Milo) does a great job of giving this film it’s beating heart, and the whole production feels hypnotically surreal.