Pusher (1996) on Netflix
Frank deals heroin in Copenhagen with his sidekick Tonny. When a large deal goes wrong, he owes the drug lord Milo more money than he can raise.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.3/1053,024 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Frank is a low-level drug dealer in Copenhagen who works with his partner Tonny. The two go to a heroin deal and sell only part of their product, then drift around town. Frank visits Vic, a prostitute who holds part of his stash in exchange for a fee; she wants a serious relationship and he prefers to keep things casual. His former cell mate Hasse, a Swede, turns up and the pair arrange a large drug deal. The heroin has to come from Milo, a Serbian drug lord Frank already owes money to, and Milo lets him take it on the promise that he comes straight back with the payment. Police arrive at the deal, and while breaking away from them Frank falls into Sankt Jørgen's Lake, where the heroin is destroyed.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pusher (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Nicolas Winding Refn fired Anders Nyborg, his original Frank, two weeks before shooting began, thinking him too placid and boring, and had no replacement lined up. He then approached Kim Bodnia, an established actor at the time, who accepted the part.
- Slavko Labović, who played the Serbian thug Radovan in Pusher, was a friend of Serbian war criminal Željko Ražnatović and supplied a poster of him to serve as a prop in the headquarters of the drug lord Milo.
- Pusher began as a five-minute short Nicolas Winding Refn made to apply to a Danish film school. He turned down the place he was offered and instead expanded it into a feature-length independent film, using a nominal amount of funding he had managed to acquire.
- Pusher was never intended to become a franchise, but financial difficulties forced Nicolas Winding Refn to make two sequels, Pusher II and Pusher 3, each following a different secondary character from the first film. Both were financial and critical successes.
- Pusher is considered the first Danish-language gangster film and was the breakthrough for Nicolas Winding Refn and several lead actors. Refn said it created cults of dedicated fans and pushed Danish fashion to copy costumes worn in it, and Kim Bodnia became a Danish leading man largely because of it.
- The scene in which Frank shoots at Milo's thugs was first filmed with no special effects at all, and an unhappy Nicolas Winding Refn reshot it using squibs.
- Composer Povl Kristian did not return for the Pusher sequels, but the "Pusher theme" he wrote with Peter Peter for the first film was used in every film that followed.
