Promotional material for Pusher (1996) shows the film’s protagonist Frank (Kim Bodnia) imitating the two-gun pose of Travis Bickle as played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). It is a powerful image, one which is by now iconic, but curiously Frank does not, at any point, tote two guns in the film. Nevertheless, the image is representative of Pusher in its depiction of a fantasy of masculinity, a theme which is continued in the film’s two sequels.
When we first see Frank at home in Pusher, he is shown looking at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, in which a still photograph of Bickle is placed along with images of the protagonists from Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) and Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971). The placement of these photographs makes it clear that Frank sees himself as cut from the same tough guy cloth as these fictional characters who are, for him, icons of masculinity. The reality, however, is much different: Frank is a mid-level drug dealer whose acts of violence are confined mostly to physically intimidating his young, nervous customers and who only sports a gun after he ends up in debt to the drug lord Milo (Zlatko Burić) and, in desperation, robs a crew of other small-time dealers. It is in the scene showing this robbery that Frank comes closest, visually, to the promotional image of him brandishing two guns. However, he only has one; in his other hand is a bag. The robbery takes place in the gym out of which the crew – who are bodybuilders – operates. In this macho space Frank, physically out of shape compared to the other dealers, only has power over them because he is armed. When he brandishes his gun – and his bag, easily mistaken on first sight for another pistol – we are instantly reminded of Bickle, a comparison for which we have been primed by both the earlier scene at the bathroom mirror and by the promotional image of two-gun Frank. It seems that Frank waves the bag around in the hope that it will be mistaken for a gun but also because he copes in this perilous moment by channelling De Niro’s performance of Bickle.
The two-gun promotional image is a shrewd marketing choice which creates the expectation in the potential audience that Pusher will be in similar thematic territory to Taxi Driver which, in terms of its representation of what Susanne Kappesser refers to, in reference to Refn’s work, as ‘marginalized masculinity’, it is. Moreover, the image conveys Pusher’s preoccupation with the performance of masculinity. This is evident from the outset in the relationship between Frank and his dealer sidekick Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) which is characterised by good-natured verbal jousting. These exchanges, which involve wild exaggerations about their sexual prowess, are clearly performative but they are also part of the on-going performance of heterosexual masculinity that Frank is involved in on a daily basis – even when he is at home alone as we see in the bathroom mirror scene – a performance which is influenced by the movies he has watched, such as Taxi Driver, Scarface and Shaft, that have shaped his fantasy of himself. The image of two-gun Frank may not correspond to an event actually shown in the film but it nevertheless represents how Frank thinks of himself, even before desperate circumstances force him to pull a gun for real.
Frank’s performance of straight masculinity is also evident in his relationship with his casual girlfriend, the sex-worker Vic (Laura Draesbek), which affirms his heterosexuality, both to himself and to the outside world. As is the case with most of Refn’s films, no sex is shown in Pusher with Frank even, at one point, rejecting the advances of Vic who would much prefer a more committed relationship. Frank does demonstrate some affection towards Vic but he is also possessive, to the extent of, we learn, having assaulted one of her clients. This possessiveness, rooted in his need to affirm heterosexual masculinity, coupled with the distance Frank maintains towards Vic and the contempt he displays towards her way of making a living – he tells Tonny that he limits their lovemaking to fellatio because Vic is ‘paid-for pussy’ – is indicative of the essential ‘sadness’, as Refn has put it, of Frank’s life, and of the masculinity of gangsterism in general, which Refn has stated he wished to explore in Pusher. This ‘sadness’ seems rooted in the very masculinity Frank is compelled to perform.
As events escalate following the failed drug deal which places Frank in debt to Milo, we see how truly inadequate Frank is as a genuine tough guy gangster with the introduction of Milo’s henchman Radovan (Slavko Labović) whom Milo forces to Frank to accompany when he collects a debt from a drug addict (Thomas Bo Larsen), whose brother was one of Frank’s childhood friends. Knowing the addict will be unable to pay up, Radovan instead attempts to force him into robbing a bank. When the terrified addict commits suicide in front of them with the gun Radovan has given him, Frank is clearly shocked. The scene is a pivotal moment in the film, leading to further escalation of events as the increasingly desperate Frank ramps up his masculine performance and the violence that goes with it. This violence includes brutally assaulting Tonny – whom Frank believes has informed on him to the police – with a baseball bat. Frank wields this phallic weapon in a bar named ‘Spunk’, a fitting title for a homosocial space populated by men and for the site of a passionate physical engagement with the only character for whom Frank displays any true emotion in the film, clearly enjoying the earlier badinage with Tonny, kissing him on the lips in a nightclub after a young woman has rebuffed their advances, and crying, for the only time in the film, after the assault. These tears seem to be an indication of where Frank’s genuine feelings lie; it is difficult to imagine him showing any such emotion for Vic.
In the end, though, Vic has her revenge on Frank, fleeing Copenhagen with the money Frank has amassed to appease, but not fully pay off, Milo and leaving him to an almost certain death, either at Milo’s hands or at those of the bodybuilders he robbed: in a montage, similar to the closing sequence of another Scorsese film concerned with marginalised masculinity, Mean Streets (1973), we see Milo and Radovan prepare the room in which they intend to kill Frank and the bodybuilders arming up. Pusher ends with an extended close-up on Frank’s face as he realises he is out of options and that his fate is sealed. Refn has remarked, of the gangster world, that ‘people who grow up in this environment become this environment; very few break away from it’ and this is certainly the case with Frank who, already marginalised from the mainstream of society as a criminal, has further isolated himself from those around him including Vic, Tonny, Milo – who had been something of a father figure to Frank – and even his own mother (Gyda Hansen) whom, in another indication of Frank’s underlying misogyny, he treats coldly in their one scene together, when, after not having seen her for some time, he solicits money from her to cover his debt, taking the little she can offer without gratitude. The absence of his father from the film and the paternal attitude displayed towards Frank by Milo earlier in the film make the prospect of Frank’s death at Milo’s hands all the more tragic while also providing, in Milo, a stark contrast to Frank’s performance of masculinity: Milo’s easy, unsentimental shift from father figure to potential murderer is an indication of how he fully embodies the environment in which he operates. Frank too has ‘become’ his environment but on a level closer to the addict who commits suicide than to the callous likes of Milo or Radovan. Simply put, Frank is not man enough to survive once he has broken out of his lowly station in the gangster world.
De Niro’s Mean Streets character, Johnny Boy, is recalled in Tonny, who graduates from supporting status in Pusher to protagonist of Pusher II (2004). Like Johnny Boy, Tonny is impulsive and erratic, traits which are intensified in Pusher II seemingly as a result of brain damage caused by the beating by Frank and perhaps also by the brutality of incarceration: the film opens with Tonny being released from prison. And like Johnny, Tonny is in debt, to his former cellmate who, out of deference to Tonny’s father, a powerful gangster known as The Duke (Leif Sylvester), allows him extra time to pay up. Nevertheless, the pressure is on Tonny to earn which he plans to do by joining his father’s crew of car thieves. From the outset, however, The Duke treats Tonny with open contempt, an attitude which is only intensified when, in an attempt to impress him, Tonny steals a flashy sportscar which the crew would find impossible to fence. The Duke humiliates Tonny at the nightclub wedding reception he throws for one of his henchmen, and Tonny’s friend, Ø (Øyvind Hagen-Traberg) when, in his speech, he belittles Tonny and declares that he considers Ø to be his true son. This callous treatment, and his desire for The Duke’s approval, compels Tonny to intensify his criminal activities, moving outside the realm of car theft and back into the world of drug dealing which brings him into contact with a small-time pimp named Kurt the Cunt and, through him, Milo with whom the two arrange a heroin deal.
As with Frank, the intensification of his activities involves a corresponding escalation of his performance of masculinity, despite Tonny’s basic incompetence as a gangster, which is foreshadowed by his inability to perform sexually earlier in the film at a brothel following his release from prison. In an extension of the bragging from his verbal jousts with Frank in Pusher, Tonny attempts to compensate for his impotency – the result, at least partially, of his cocaine use – with the two sex workers he has engaged (Maya Ababadjani and Maria Mendoza) by adopting a studly persona as the proud owner of the ‘King of Cocks’. In Pusher, Tonny brags to Frank that it takes four women to sexually satisfy him; here, confronted with just two, Tonny cuts a pathetic figure, the ‘Respect’ tattoo on the back of his head coming across as a desperate plea rather than a masterful command, as his brags turn into whining entreaties for the women’s assistance. The sex workers snicker at Tonny, describing his ‘King of Cocks’ as, instead, a ‘Hobbit dick’ and producing a large black dildo which contrasts with his flaccid white member while also recalling the racism displayed by Tonny in one of his verbal jousts with Frank in Pusher and which continues throughout Pusher II. Instructed by Tonny to have sex with each other, the women unsettle Tonny when they introduce a theme of incest to their own performance with one calling the other ‘Mommy’. This touches a nerve with Tonny who orders them to stop before storming off and it is later revealed that his own mother, now dead, was also a sex worker, as well as a drug addict, providing further insight into Tonny’s history of marginalisation within his own, dysfunctional family.
Just as Frank needs Vic to affirm his heterosexual masculinity in Pusher, Tonny needs to perform at the brothel to affirm his sexuality, and, by extension, his fantasy of himself as a macho gangster. While he ultimately fails at the brothel – despite his use of coke and a porn video as additional stimulation, the latter providing a less threatening version of female sexuality than the actual women he hires – some affirmation of his straightness, and his sexual potency, does come Tonny’s way from another source, albeit an unwelcome one, when he learns that a former sexual partner, Charlotte (Anne Sørensen), claims to have given birth to his son while Tonny was in prison. Initially unconvinced by the claim, and under further pressure by Charlotte’s demands that he pay child support, Tonny gradually develops fatherly feelings for the child, particularly after witnessing Charlotte’s neglect of him at Ø’s wedding reception where she snorts cocaine with the bride, Gry (Maria Erwolter). Infuriated by this, Tonny commands Charlotte to take the child home only for her and Gry to insult his intelligence and, most painfully of all, his masculinity which provokes Tonny to physically assault Charlotte, choking her until he is pulled away by other guests including Ø’ whom he had earlier heard The Duke refer to as his ‘true son’.
This humiliation by The Duke introduces a note of tension to the reception scene which increases along with Tonny’s sense of isolation and, correspondingly, his intoxication as he gets drunk and snorts cocaine twice in the nightclub’s bathroom. Each time after taking the drug he regards himself in the mirror, recalling the scene in Frank’s bathroom discussed above. But where Frank had images of his masculine role-models for comfort and inspiration, Tonny has only himself. His sense of marginalisation is evident when he scans the nightclub after leaving the bathroom, registering the presence of Kurt who is deep in conversation with The Duke. After his attack on Charlotte, following which Tonny leaves the club, Kurt approaches him, assuring him he can smooth things over with The Duke whom Tonny has angered by disrupting the reception. By doing so, Kurt further humiliates Tonny by implying he has the respect from The Duke which Tonny so desperately craves. Kurt is later revealed to have been financially backed by The Duke in the drug deal he instigates with Milo which goes wrong when Kurt, mistakenly believing the police are about to arrive, flushes away the heroin he has purchased, putting him into a similar position with The Duke as Frank is with Milo in Pusher. Following this debacle, Kurt has been manipulating the hapless Tonny into sharing the debt Kurt owes to his father.
Now more desperate than ever, both for The Duke’s approval and to pay his debts, Tonny agrees to kill Jeanette, (Linse Kessler) the mother of The Duke’s young son, and Tonny’s half-brother, Valdemar (Luis Werner Grau), who has been demanding half-custody of her child. On visiting Jeanette, a sex worker, Tonny is touched by her kindness and is incapable of fulfilling his mission, putting him further at odds with The Duke whom he brutally murders, in an Oedipal moment, after The Duke vents his anger and contempt. Furthermore, Tonny’s encounter with Jeanette allows him to understand the true power dynamics of the gangster world in which women are subservient to men, forced into lowly roles such as sex worker, drug mule and brood mare, the latter in order to provide children, preferably sons, who will carry on both the lineage and the dynasty of high-stationed, in this milieu at least, figures such as The Duke. Unless, of course, they disappoint, as has been the case with Tonny, despite, or rather because of, all his macho posturing. On meeting Jeanette, Tonny seems to realise what is in store for the pre-teen Valdemar, already initiated into a world of misogyny as represented by his witnessing, at the wedding reception, a stripper performing a sexually explicit dance on Kurt – who assaults, and possibly kills, a sex worker at his home shortly afterwards – as well as for his own son who seems destined to enter the same environment. Following this revelation, Tonny takes his child from Charlotte, who is busy getting high again with Gry, and flees Copenhagen. The film closes with a contemplative shot, beautifully lit, which lingers on Tonny’s ‘Respect’ tattoo, suggesting that he has finally achieved some measure of dignity in escaping the environment he had become (even if, as Refn has joked, he most likely gets arrested when he attempts to hold up a gas station soon after).
The performance of masculinity is perhaps less prominent in Pusher III (2006) which focuses on Milo, the only character to appear in all three movies of the Trilogy. This is because, in contrast to both Frank and Tonny, Milo, by now a veteran gangster, seems more certain of who and what he is. Part of this identity is being a heroin addict and the film opens with Milo attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting on the occasion of his fifth day of sobriety. Taking place over the course of a single day – the twenty-fifth birthday of his daughter Milena (Marinela Dekić) – Pusher III is far and away the most comedic entry in the Trilogy in its depiction of Milo’s attempt to cope with the stress of preparing Milena’s birthday part while also facilitating a drug deal with Copenhagen’s Turkish mob. The party preparations involve Milo cooking which he thinks twice about after giving his henchmen food poisoning after under-preparing their lunchtime shawarma. With his crew out of action, Milo is forced to trust Little Mohammed (Ilyas Agac), an arrogant and ambitious young gangster from another faction, with a consignment of Ecstasy tablets which Milo, primarily a heroin dealer, lacks the expertise to shift. Out of his depth, both in the drug deal, which inevitably goes wrong, and with the catering for Milena’s party, Milo resorts to buying take-away food from a Chinese restaurant and it is here where we see the performance of masculinity take place. At the restaurant Milo encounters Kurt, still the same shifty, posturing street thug he was in Pusher II, who convinces the clearly, and uncharacteristically, stressed-out Milo to smoke heroin in the restaurant’s toilet. Kurt’s motivation for supplying Milo with the drug may be revenge for Milena’s ridicule of him and Tonny after their drug deal goes wrong in Pusher II. Whatever the reason, Kurt effectively seduces Milo into getting high, employing the smoothly persuasive tone we can imagine he uses in his life as a pimp, telling Milo: ‘You say no, but you mean “yes”’.
The homoerotic undertone of their exchange is continued when Milo retreats to a stall in the bathroom – a site associated with illicit gay sex – to take the drug. After doing so Milo appears, of course, relaxed but also vulnerable, recalling Tonny’s bathroom scenes in Pusher II. However, it is not long before Milo’s role as a tough guy gangster reasserts itself when, at the restaurant he owns, he grows tired of his mistreatment at the hands of Albanian mobster Rexho (Ramadan Huseini), the consequence of the disastrous drug deal initiated with Little Mohammed which has resulted in Milo becoming subservient to Rexho despite his seniority in age and experience. Appalled by Rexho’s attempt to traffick a young Polish woman to a returning Jeanette from Pusher II, he snaps, beating Rexho and the woman’s pimp to death with a hammer. After, in one of the film’s most comedic moments, reciting the addict’s prayer for serenity, Milo recruits Radovan from Pusher to help him dispose of the bodies. The two also torture, and eventually kill, Little Mohammed with a brutal efficiency suggestive of a previous life in the military. This possibility is first raised in Pusher when we see a shrine to the Serbian war criminal, and former gangster, Željko Ražnatović also known as Arkan, who is a folk hero to some Serbs. The poster of Arkan in the shrine was supplied by Labović whose character, Radovan’s, name is a reference to another Serbian war criminal, Radovan Karadžić’, a portrait of whom is displayed in his restaurant. These images of actual violent men are Milo’s and Radovan’s equivalents of the Frank’s fictional icons of masculinity in Pusher and are indicative of their violent nature which contrasts with the fantasises, and the performances, of both Frank and Tonny.
Nevertheless, in Pusher III Milo is outmatched by none other than his daughter, Milena, whom, as he admits, he is incapable of refusing. A shrewd operator, Milena sees herself as the heir to her father’s empire, in a similar role as The Duke envisioned for Valdemar in Pusher II, with her fiancé Mike (Levino Jensen), one of the bodybuilders robbed by Frank in Pusher, doing the dirty work for her. It is, then, Milo’s performance of another masculine role, that of indulgent father, that will be his undoing and the film closes with him contemplating his fate, recalling the end of Pusher in another powerful expression by Refn of the ‘sadness’ of the gangster world and the performances of masculinity it demands.
Dr David Sweeney is a lecturer in the Design History and Theory department of the Glasgow School of Art where he specialises in popular culture.
He is the author of the books The Films of Nicolas Winding Refn: Genre, Gender, Glamour (LUP, 2024); Scanned Clean: (Re)Reading Michael Marshall Smith in the Digital Age (Subterranean Press, 2022) and The OA (LUP/Auteur, 2022), a critical study of the Netflix series of the same name, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.
You can contact him here: [email protected].