10 Globe-Trotting Movies About The Illegal Drugs Trade

7. Pusher

From the depths of prison we return to the drug trade at the street level, where it is under the control of the criminal underworld. Rather than the smog-filled skies of Los Angeles this time Copenhagen is the setting, with Pusher, the movie which launched Nicolas Winding Refn's career. Drug dealers Frank (Kim Bodnia) and Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) are low-level thugs peddling in heroin in the seedy back streets and claustrophobic apartments of the city, eager to up their game and score a bigger deal. When a deal goes sour after the arrival of the police, Frank finds himself sinking into a quagmire of betrayals, torture and violence which continues to escalate as the feud deepens. Shot with intense and insistent hand-held camerawork, Pusher is stylistically very different from Refn's later movies, betraying its significantly smaller budget. But it is this immediacy which makes the film so brutally engaging, giving it the feel of a documentary in which the crew have been granted an impossible level of access to a side to the drugs trade few have experienced first hand, and most people rather wouldn't.