Pusher II

Dedicated to Hubert Selby Jr., Pusher II moves in the familiar territory of the New York writer, night scenes populated by strippers, drug addicts and hopeless petty criminals. Unlike Last Stop Brooklyn, and the first movie in the trilogy, Pusher ends on a high, pun not intended, with a glimmer of hope to illuminate the Scandinavian night that most of this movie seems to embrace.

Eight years have gone by since Frank from Pusher broke Tonny's head with a baseball bat. Frank is now gone, and Tonny, the eternal screwup, seeks criminal success working for the big boss himself: his father. What he finds of course is deceit, empty violence, cocaine-fueled failures of all kinds.

Even when seeking redemption in a loveless world Nicolas Winding Refn's characters are still unable to talk except that with fists or knives, unable to act or to stop acting if not by chemically quelling one's fears. This movie is less violence, but perhaps even scarier than Pusher II. It is because of the absolute absence of human empathy or maybe just because is a little bit of Tonny in all of us.