With Blood On My Hands: Pusher II - film review

With Blood On My Hands: Pusher II - film review -- First is from The Evening Standard, second is from from UK's channel 4...both pretty possitive, though the first one is the best...

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Evening Standard

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn came to prominence with Pusher in 1996. This is the second in an intended trilogy about lowlife in Denmark, and it makes the current lot of British gangster movies look pathetically inadequate.

It is dark as pitch, totally believable in its realism, and has a performance from Mads Mikkelsen in its central role that is brilliantly controlled.

Mikkelsen plays a small-time crook who leaves prison with a debt to his father, the most vicious gangster in Copenhagen, and another to a prostitute with whom he discovers he has a child.

The more he attempts to sort his life out, the worse it gets. Snorting cocaine and slurping alcohol, he is despised by all his associates and makes crass mistake after mistake.

Mikkelsen played a secondary character in Pusher but here has to carry the weight of the whole film. He makes it as much a study of a born loser as a thriller and his naivety is signalled by acting that has you watching him like a hawk throughout.

The rest of the cast contribute the sort of cameos that would grace an early Scorsese film.

This is a tough, uncompromising movie. Its portrait of seedy crookery is often remarkable, without for a moment becoming melodramatic.
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Channel 4



Sequel to Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn's 1996 crime drama, Pusher. After a year in prison, Mads Mikkelsen's dim-witted criminal finds himself working for his gangster father


A gritty, ultra-realistic movie, 1996's Pusher announced Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn as a significant filmmaking force, a reputation that has been enhanced by his subsequent films Bleeder (1999) and Fear X (2003). As good as these movies are, they lack the visceral clout of his debut. Indeed, such was the impact of Pusher, it's perhaps not surprising that it has taken Winding Refn almost a decade to make the follow-up.

Set 13 months after the original Pusher, With Blood On My Hands: Pusher II focuses upon Tonny (Mikkelsen), the partner of the first film's hero, Frank. Fresh out of jail, Tonny should turn his back on his criminal past but instead takes up a position working for his car thief father Smeden (Sylvester). Smeden is keen to point out his son's many flaws, and his constant criticism drives Tonny to distraction. But this first-hand experience of poor parenting results in Tonny turning out to be a model dad when he discovers that he's fathered a child.

Watching the hulking Tonny - a man with the word "respect" tattooed on the back of his head - with his tiny baby are amongst Pusher II's most comic and charming moments. The rest of the movie's levity comes courtesy of the wonderfully named Kurt The Kunt (Nielsen), a dealer who winds up dragging Tonny knee-deep into his world of *beep*

Such lighter moments might seem glib when pitted against the "authentic" backdrop, but their importance becomes apparent when, in its later stages, Pusher II plunges into very dark territory. Indeed, so graphic and unpleasant is the film's exploration of Copenhagen's sex industry that Winding Refn's film makes Ken Russell's hard-hitting Whore look like Pretty Woman.

At times a rather hard movie to watch, Pusher II lacks the pace, verve and intensity of the first film - yes, there are action scenes, but these sequences don't grow out of the script organically and so therefore lack excitement. Yet Winding Refn's film retains much of what made Pusher so
As Tonny, Mikkelsen turns a lumbering, thuggish imbecile into a modern-day incarnation of Lennie Small from 'Of Mice And Men'. Lief Sylvester and Kurt Nielsen are also very good as, respectively, evil count and court jester.

Superbly shot by Morten Søeborg, whose visuals feel simultaneously realistic and stylish, Pusher II is a good film that might have been considered great were it not the follow-up to a landmark release. Whatever its shortcomings, powerful, namely impressive location work and performances so real you sometimes feel like you're watching a documentary.
Winding Refn's execution confirms he is a force to be reckoned with.


Verdict
Not quite the equal of the superb Pusher, With Blood On My Hands is nevertheless a decent and distinctive slice of crime drama.