PUSHER (1996)

 Throughout the 1990's, after the rise in popularity of Mr. Tarantino, there were a whole slew of these PULP FICTION-rip-off gangster flicks. Looking back at them now most of them were pretty lame. This is another one but luckily it comes from outside of the U.S. from some faraway land called Denmark so that's different. Also it was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn who I hear has made some good Hollywood movies like DRIVE and that movie where Vikings walk around(VALHALLA RISING)  but I've only seen this one(and it's two sequels) and that BRONSON movie which was an interesting mess of a film. Here we deal with a fellow who has a pretty shitty week being a low-level drug-dealer. His friends fuck him over, the cops get involved with his illegal activities, his stripper/prostitute girlfriend is a bit unreliable as stripper/prostitute girlfriend's are wont to be and things go on what can best be described as a downward spiral. Like Mr. Tarantino's films a lot of time is taken up with witty dialogue but here it does help flesh out the main character and get into his head so we can actually relate and give a crap when shit starts to go bad so there is a purpose to it all. There is also the expected smattering of violence and we get a head blown off with a shotgun, a head bashed in with a baseball bat and a few gunshot wounds. Overall I would say this is worth a look if you dig gangster flicks and can deal with a subtitled one. The only bad thing is that since the whole trilogy works together as one big story the ending of this first part makes you want to immediately view the sequels, which, from what I recall, are equally entertaining but quite time-consuming since each one is almost 2 hours long and who has that kinda spare time?
 There was a Bollywood remake of this in 2010(which amazingly doesn't have any song and dance numbers in it!) and then another remake in 2012 which I've heard nothing good about.