Do you know how deep the shit is under your feet?
Having tackled the Red Riding Trilogy, this week I'm setting my sights on Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher Trilogy, which took a bit longer to make it to the screen. The first installment, 1996's Pusher, covers a week in the life of a mid-level Copenhagen drug dealer (Kim Bodnia) who tries to pull off a big score and gets in way over his head. His first mistake is going to a Serbian supplier (Zlatko Buric) he already owes a lot of money to, but that's nothing compared to his reliance on his fuck-up of a friend (Mads Mikkelsen) to be his backup. When the deal goes south and Bodnia is arrested by the police (who are forced to release him after 24 hours, but do so knowing he's going to have a lot of pissed off people after him), he finds himself in hot water with Buric and his well-being threatened by the Serbian's enforcer (Slavko Labovic), whose methods of extracting money out of deadbeats are most brutal indeed.
Meanwhile, Bodnia tries to keep up appearances (if you can call it that) with his prostitute girlfriend (Laura Drasbæk), who has certain illusions about her profession. "I'm not a whore," she says. "I'm a champagne girl." To Bodnia, it makes no difference whatsoever, "so long as it works for you." Pity he's unable to make his lifestyle choice work for him, but this is simply one of those situations where the more you try to dig yourself out, the deeper the hole gets. Little surprise, then, that Bodnia's character didn't return when Refn decided to make a sequel eight years later. When you've burned as many bridges as he does over the course of the film, there's no coming back.