How entertaining?     ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆

6 October 2012

This a movie review of PUSHER.

By Hemanth Kissoon

“I’ve got to get hold of some money today,” Frank

This project had my sceptic-ometer dialled to 10: a low budget Brit gangster remake of a modern gem, with the casting of model Agyness Deyn. Then my hopes rose, surely the makers would learn from the plethora of drab and creatively bankrupt re-dos that plague the multiplexes? My initial instinct was correct, bar Deyn, who turns in a decent performance.

DRIVE director Nicolas Winding Refn made a name for himself with one of the great trilogies, the PUSHER series, from 1996 to 2005. The first in the series was grimy, and pit-of-your-stomach tense. Sixteen years later and a pointless English-language update has been delivered, devoid of panache and inventiveness. It adds nothing to the original – the most heinous crime of a remake - well, bar the pounding, fantastic soundtrack by Orbital; a calling card for them.

Frank (Richard Coyle) is an ex-con, small-time drug dealer in London, regular user of the substances he pushes. Through a series of poor business decisions, he ends up owing some less-than-merciful peeps £55k. They are not the local bank foreclosing on pre-submitted collateral. A chunk or two or more of flesh is required unless the sum is returned in a ridiculously short time.

Refn’s dingy 90s thriller had our pulse racing as we actually feared for the safety of, essentially, a massive douche. The new version opts to dial up the brightness (while reducing the foreboding); and due to mimicking the original’s story beats, captures some of the dread. However, the persistent question running throughout is: When is something imaginative going to happen? PUSHER (2012) just has one stand out moment – a nightclub fight that smoothly evolves from the patrons pummelling each other to dancing. If that stylishness had been extrapolated everywhere, then something worthwhile might have ensued.