Pusher (18) 89 mins ***
Before
the much-lauded Drive, Nicolas
Winding Refn made Pusher, a 1996
thriller charting a fateful week in the life of a Copenhagen drug dealer,
played by The Bridge’s Kim Bodnia.
This London-set redo ditches those ever-pesky subtitles, rejigs the smuggling
routes and cranks up the style; surprisingly, it translates pretty well.
Richard Coyle is very solid in the central role, trying to protect both his
business model and his kneecaps from the police, dodgy Mancunians, and Zlatko
Buric (wisely retained from the original) as a terrifyingly genial kingpin.
With its
pulsing Orbital soundtrack, this version is very much post-Drive. Director Luis Prieto tears restlessly through filters, light
sources and camera tricks, maintaining Refn’s grim momentum in yanking us
around an universe that – full of desperate folk in deepening holes – appears
newly relevant. It remains an obsessively male world – though ex-model Agyness
Deyn doesn’t embarrass herself as a druggy poledancer moll – and one high on
its own flash, but the story and characters lurking beneath it still have the
capacity to sock you in the gut.
Pusher opens nationwide today.
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