Pusher (2010)
A desperate drug-pusher must avoid police, and find money to pay-off a huge debt.
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Reviews
Strong and Moving!
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
This is an excellent remake (of sorts) of Nicholas Winding Refn's original but is also heavily influenced by the Harvey Keitel starring, Abel Ferrara film Bad Lieutenant (1992). This adds excellent psychological layers not found in the Refn original, though it is not an improvement, merely different and less predictable than a shot for shot remake would have been.The main additions are the cricket/gambling sub-plot that Salim is embroiled in and the hallucinatory religious overtones that emerge toward the end, as well as the tragic but inevitable denouement. Filmed in London and Leicester. Highly recommended.
I watched this at a preview test screening they did in Leicester. The film is brilliant. I went with an Asian mate and he couldn't believe it (there's no Bollywood songs! The director/actor is British! The last section of the film plot is totally different from Pusher 1. It is set in the 1999 summer of the cricket world cup (leading to Oz & Pakistan final). There is an added cricket/match fixing/gambling subplot in the film too. I think the director Assad has done a really good job and his performance holds the thing together. It has been Indianised but not sold out and definitely not a shot to shot remake. Viewers (black, white, Asian) at the preview liked the film. One question, with the cricket – did the film producers fix the Pakistan match last week for publicity for their film!!!???lol