After going deep into debt, "renegade" film director NW Refn plots a "quick, easy, and violent" way back out of the red- capitalize on the previous success of his drugs, guns, and bolt-cutters street drama PUSHER ('96) with a sequel... or two!
This almost-too-intimate-to-be-real-to-be-true documentary shows Refn trying to create a way out of his financial predicament that zigs and zags almost as much as the paths that the characters take in his PUSHER movies, only here we have the banks and film institutes wreaking havoc for our subject (not hero, because this is a documentary) instead of thugs, and debt threats filling in for death threats. Not to mention a new baby and mother to help provide for. AND a crippling drug habit for Alka Selter, that is simply shot and used in a way that reminds me of the stylized drug-taking/pupil-dilating shots from Requiem for a Dream. Nice touch, as I believe Refn is known to avoid drugs and alcohol.
This all boils down to a documentary about Refn that is part yuppie version of the kind of situation his movies' characters find themselves in, and part insight into what its like to try to make it as an independent film maker in Denmark (he didn't attend the famed directors school). It makes an excellent and fitting bonus feature to the recently re-released PUSHER 1 on DVD.
This almost-too-intimate-to-be-real-to-be-true documentary shows Refn trying to create a way out of his financial predicament that zigs and zags almost as much as the paths that the characters take in his PUSHER movies, only here we have the banks and film institutes wreaking havoc for our subject (not hero, because this is a documentary) instead of thugs, and debt threats filling in for death threats. Not to mention a new baby and mother to help provide for. AND a crippling drug habit for Alka Selter, that is simply shot and used in a way that reminds me of the stylized drug-taking/pupil-dilating shots from Requiem for a Dream. Nice touch, as I believe Refn is known to avoid drugs and alcohol.
This all boils down to a documentary about Refn that is part yuppie version of the kind of situation his movies' characters find themselves in, and part insight into what its like to try to make it as an independent film maker in Denmark (he didn't attend the famed directors school). It makes an excellent and fitting bonus feature to the recently re-released PUSHER 1 on DVD.