From my favorite movies..

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Awful! A drug dealer has to dump his drugs when the cops get him, and so he owes his supplier big. He can't pay, and grows desperate trying to scrape together the huge sum he owes, otherwise he's toast. My question: who cares? The dealer is a total dick. I pretty much wanted to see him die from the film's first frame, and every second the thugs who are after him aren't torturing and killing him is a wasted one, in my opinion. To boot, the film is absolutely ugly visually. How the Hell did Refn ever produce a film as great as Drive? The only thing I really liked in the film was Laura Drasbæk, the prostitute whom the drug dealer is kind of dating. He treats her like such crap, though, it's hard to watch.

A drug pusher grows increasingly desperate after a botched deal leaves him with a large debt to a ruthless drug lord.Today I continued the Nicolas Winding Refn marathon with his first movie "Pusher". I had begun with "Drive" and was great, then i followed with four films (Valhalla Rising-Bleeder-Bronson and Fear X).Pusher is a very good movie and when you take into consideration it was his first movie, it makes it all the better, you can sum up the movie in one simple sentence, (A really bad week) in the life of a Danish drug pusher. That's the story. For a first time director, working with a lot of first time actors, he gets great performances out of them. The story moves along very quick and has enough turns in it to keep the viewer interested.The characters are also deep enough to make you actually care what happens. Many first time film makers seem to go more with whats happening now then character development. Refn however does a good job at both. The only familiar face in the movie is Mads Mikkelsen, who played the villain in Casino Royale and also was the main character in Refn's "Valhalla Rising". This movie is the first in a trilogy but has a definitive ending that does not make you feel you need to see the rest immediately, ending leaves one speechless. I won't spoil it, but it's unforgiving and breathtaking.

Rather slow-moving until the last thirty minutes or so, though even then it can be stop-and-go at times. The drawn out dialogues in the car and convenience store which take place the protagonist and his sidekick in the beginning are juvenile and boring.Aside from a rather unexpected turn out at an attempted money collection around the middle, nothing really exciting happens until the very end. But even then, it is almost torturously slow and suspenseful, which I guess is the good thing going about the film.I suppose I shouldn't put it down too much, since it's not particularly boring. It shows the more mundane side of a criminal's life, and presents the inevitable downward turn with realism.One part that impressed me was a conversation which takes place in the car between Frank and Frank's boss' goon. The guy casually talks to Frank about how he once cut out a guy's kneecap with a knife while collecting money. In the meanwhile, he and Frank are heading somewhere for Frank to collect money he himself owes the goon's boss. Yet they speak as if they were best friends. This was the one thing about the film that truly stood out to me, as far as the characters go. Up until the very end, they all speak as if they were friends. Don't expect the American-style macho-talk and cursing here.The best part is perhaps the anti-climactic ending, which just leaves you staring at the screen with a distinct creepy feeling of hopelessness crawling up your spine.To summary: not for action fans; decent film for more serious viewers who prefer a more dramatic approach to the criminal-life-gone-bad theme.

Frank is a drug dealer moving heroin between the level above him and his customer base. When he is asked to get 200 grams of dope in less than 24 hours he balks but when he is offered 700 on the gram he tries to pull it together. Already 50,000 in debt to local gangster Milo, Frank takes a risk and gets the drugs on credit ahead of a good sale. However when the sale goes down the police are tipped off and the only thing saving Frank from jail is his quick wits to dive into the lake and destroy the evidence against him. Released by the police within hours, Frank knows his problems are only beginning as he now owes even more money to Milo – a man not known for his patience.Although I had not really heard any hype over this film, I had heard it compared to Mean Streets in style so I thought I would give it a try. The main thing that struck me was how gritty it was and how lacking in the style and pop culture that the post-Tarantino audience have become accustom to. For some viewers this may be taken as a complaint but for my money it made the film that much better as a piece of dramatic realism as opposed to a modern thriller. Of course "reality" is a loose term in regards this film because I hope I never see this as a world I recognise, but it is still one that I found convincing.Refn's direction helps it by being hand-held and mobile in lots of good locations – the viewer never feels like they are on a set or with jobbing actors. It is perhaps a bit too gritty and slow for some tastes though but I didn't really find much wrong with it in what it tried to do. Perhaps I would have gone for a bit more character development and emotion or maybe it could have lost a bit of running time and been tighter for it, but mostly it was effectively desperate, gritty and with a good feeling of claustrophobic hopelessness. Bodnia does this aspect really well; he is an unsympathetic character but we are taken along with him as he is convincingly real. The film belongs to him but the support cast is mostly good with turns from Buric, Drasbæk, Labovic and Mikkelsen.Overall then a convincing and gritty crime story that reeks of fear and being trapped. It avoids the trappings of modern Tarantino style and instead keeps low to the street, meaning that it does well by aiming for its own target and hitting it consistently.