A darker side of Denmark

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.

With Blood On My Hands: Pusher II
Cert: cert18