Will the "Pusher" trilogy -- three violent, low-budget films about the mean streets of Copenhagen -- be the next "Sopranos"?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396184/
The Story:
Released from prison with a mounting debt to a gangster he met inside, small time thug and dealer Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) must prove himself worthy of a job in his distrusting father's, 'The Duke' (Lief Sylvester), car theft ring so he can regain his respect and pay what he owes. Once back with his old circle of friends he finds it hard to keep out of trouble and discovers a girl he slept with once has had a baby and claims it's his.
Catching up with Tonny a few years after the first film it's not revealed whether this stint in prison is for the events of that story or for another bad move he's made since. We're told that the beating he received near the end of "Pusher" (1996) has left him with mental scars as well as the physical ones that decorate his shaved head. Evidently his memory and perception are now unreliable but we'd never know without being told because he always makes the dumbest decision in any given situation and spends most of his time high or getting high anyway.
Even though he's one of life's born losers and quite frustrating to watch, a great performance by Mikkelsen makes Tonny surprisingly sympathetic. His father's near total contempt for him, which seems to have been life-long, is more likely to have caused his self destructive behavior than the other way around.
Unfortunately Mikkelsen's performance is one of the few saving graces. Where the first film rocketed along at a fast pace and was frighteningly intense as you were genuinely scared for the main character Frank's (Kim Bodnia) fate, this one is far too flat and predictable. Apart from a few scenes there is hardly any real action as writer and director Nicolas Winding Refn concentrates more on the mundane lives of the low pushers and losers that are Tonny and his friends. With the first films main characters Frank and Milo (In excellent performances by Kim Bodnia and Zlatko Buric) relegated to being discussed but not seen and a cameo respectively, they're not replaced with enough interesting or even likeable characters. Even the girlfriends, who aren't involved in the crimes are all pretty pathetic, especially Charlotte (Anne Sørensen) who insists that Tonny is her son's father and that he should be helping with support but any money would surely just go towards her drug habit. The dead-end lifestyle is probably very realistic but it's just not very original or enjoyable to watch.
Evidently, this was made back-to-back with "Pusher 3" (2005) mainly for the money as Winding Refn was almost bankrupt after the costly flop of his first American feature "Fear X" in 2003. This probably at least partly explains the lesser result.
Rip Specs:
File Name .............: Pusher II.avi
File Size (in bytes) ..: 1,561,501,696 bytes
Runtime (# of frames) .: 01:40:03 ( frames)
Video Codec ...........: XviD
Frame Size ............: 720x400 [=1.800]
FPS ...................: 23.976
Video Bitrate .........: 1771 kb/s
Bits per Pixel ........: 0.256 bpp
B-VOP, N-VOP, QPel, GMC ......: [B-VOP]...[N-VOP]...[]...[]
Audio Codec ...........: 0x2000(AC3, Dolby Laboratories, Inc) AC3
Sample Rate ...........: 48000 Hz
Audio bitrate .........: 192 kb/s [2 channel(s)] CBR audio
Interleave ............: 42 ms
No. of audio streams ..: 2
Pusher II.avi 
Pusher II.idx Pusher II.rar Second audio track is the director's comment on the film. MPEG4Modifier says NVOP isn't present, but it shows up in Gspot, I don't know why.
English and Spanish subs included.
Screenshots:
Part 3 will come next and after that, part 1. If there's interest I could also rip the extras (for this part only Street Casting).
