Pusher II

Tonny gets out of prison and wants to go back to his father. His father, known around the neighbourhood as the Duke, is a gangster who regards his son as useless. Tonny cannot find work, cannot clear his debts and learns he has a child of his own. Being a father and earning his father's approval will not run at the same time, and it goes to ruin. Nicolas Winding Refn directed. Mads Mikkelsen plays Tonny and Leif Sylvester plays the Duke, with Zlatko Buric as the drug boss Milo and Linse Kessler as Jeanette. The reason the sequels exist is purely financial. Refn's Fear X collapsed commercially in 2003 and left him in serious debt, so he made the second and third Pusher films. The screenplay was written in roughly two weeks to a month. Peter Peter wrote the score with Peter Kyed; the largely punk soundtrack carries a new version of the Pusher theme from the first film. It opened on 25 December 2004. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 100 percent with a 7.7 average and Metacritic at 78. Who it is for: viewers who like crime films about the underside of Copenhagen and want to see one of Mikkelsen's ugliest, most defenceless performances. Who it is not for: anyone expecting it to continue the first film. This one follows a different character and runs alongside the original rather than after it.