‘Pusher’
I wrote about Copenhagen Cowboy in this space not too long ago, a series that dazzled me and sent me all the way down the Nicolas Winding Refn rabbit hole. During Copenhagen Cowboy: Nightfall, the making-of documentary that appears on Netflix, NWR talked about how his current series was a companion piece, of sorts, to his Pusher trilogy, all of which follow the arcs of a few low and mid-level drug dealers in ’90s era Copenhagen. The first film follows Frank (Kim Bodnia, whom you might recognize from Killing Eve) and his sidekick Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen, here making his film debut), a pair of heroin dealers who get caught up in a undercover sting operation and find themselves on the run from both the cops and other denizens of the underworld. This gritty indie is recommended for fans of Trainspotting, as NWR’s debut film shares a lot of DNA with Danny Boyle’s masterpiece.