Pusher 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Pusher 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 11, 2025

Nicolas Winding Refn's "Pusher" (1996) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Second Sight. The supplemental features on the release include new audio commentary by Nicolas Winding Refn and critic Peter Bradshaw and Poul Nyrup's film "Days of Sin and Nights of Nymphomania" (1963). In Danish, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

That was then. Now, I want the money and the coke.

All drug dealers can be placed into two groups. The first group is substantially bigger. Here are all the street workers, all the middlemen, and all the delusional small-timers who think that they are on their way to becoming big-timers. The overwhelming majority of them are junkies, too. They don’t just sample the product they sell, but routinely use it. In fact, many of them are in this business because they can make ‘some’ money while supporting their habit. The second group is small. Here are all the smarter drug dealers. They are not all big-timers. However, the best ones have built pragmatic distribution networks and ensured that they are protected. These drug dealers have dirty cops, city officials, and sometimes even politicians on their payroll. They do not use the product they sell. They only make money off it.

All drug dealers from the first group self-destruct. Many, after acquiring a reputation, begin making poor decisions and are eventually taken out by envious competitors. Some are busted in drug raids, get locked up, and then die in prison. A lot simply reach the point of no return, which all junkies do when their bodies can no longer process the poison they have been feeding them. After the inevitable deadly overdose, someone else inherits their business, and the same cycle is repeated. The drug dealers from this group do not die of old age.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher is about a small-time drug dealer operating on the streets of Copenhagen, Denmark. His name is Frank (Kim Bodnia), and he is in his thirties. The only person he trusts is his best friend, Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen), who assists him in his dealings and keeps his spirits up. Frank does not have a reliable business model. He resells small amounts of drugs to local junkies who know him by name, and occasional outsiders who have learned about him through the local junkies and their friends. Because the sales are irregular and the profits are small, Frank does not have any savings. In fact, he owes plenty to Milo (Zlatco Buric), a better-organized Serbian drug dealer pretending to be a legitimate restaurant owner, who has a direct line to a drug supplier back in the Motherland. Frank wants to be like Milo, but does not have his connections. It is why the best he can do is survive and hope that, eventually, after the volume of his sales improves, he will stop dealing with the worst junkies in town and create a business model like Milo’s.

After he is summoned by Milo and given an ultimatum to repay his debt, Frank decides to roll the dice on a big deal with a pair of new clients from Sweden. He gets product on credit from Milo, who treats him as a friend, but then loses it all in a massive pond when local cops go after him. While in custody and pondering the future of his relationship with Milo, Frank then learns that Tonny, after being pressured by the same cops, has betrayed him. A day after his arrest, Frank is released, and Milo dispatches his right-hand man, Radovan (Slavco Labovic), to pressure him to repay what he owes – his old debt and the total value of the product that was given to him on credit. Frank frantically begins improvising, but the more he attempts to figure out a solution, the more dire his situation becomes.

Pusher presents plenty of undisputable evidence that drug dealers and compulsive gamblers are members of the same doomed tribe. They simply choose to self-destruct with a different fix. Everything else, from how they justify their bad choices to the race to the bottom of the abyss, where they crash and burn, is virtually the same. (This is why Frank’s misery and final destination are identical to Freed’s misery and final destination in Karel Reisz's The Gambler).

The blending of very bleak and hilarious content is done quite well. Street characters like Frank, Tonny, Milo, and Radovan are usually simpletons who do a lot of awkward posturing to make them appear smarter, tougher, and more important than they are. A lot of their chatter is meant to support this posturing as well. Needless to say, when their performances are off, they can be pretty funny.

Pusher 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Second Sight's 4K Blu-ray release of Pusher does not have a Blu-ray copy of the film. If you need one, you should consider acquiring this Blu-ray release.

Please note that all screencaptures included with this article are taken from the 4K Blu-ray disc and downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray disc.

The release introduces a 4K restoration of Pusher, which was completed under the supervision of Nicolas Winding Refn. In native 4K, the 4K restoration cannot be viewed with Dolby Vision and HDR grades.

Kudos to Refn for not grading the 4K presentation with Dolby Vision and HDR grades. A lot of the darker areas in Pusher already look quite dark, and there are various other places where light is captured in particular ways to emphasize prominent highlights that would not have been accurately replicated with Dolby Vision and HDR grades. This is very, very easy to see. The overall quality of the presentation is very good. However, several sections of it have darker areas producing very heavy, borderline distracting grain, with the appearance of loose video noise, and I have never seen the film look like this before. I would have loved to have a Blu-ray copy of the 4K restoration because I suspect that the same areas look much better in 1080p. Color reproduction is fine. I did not see any anomalies to report in our review. Image stability is outstanding. All visuals are spotless.

Pusher 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this release: Danish Dolby Atmos and Danish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (with small portions of Serbian). Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.

I started viewing Pusher with the original DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, and then tested a few areas with the Dolby Atmos track. I think that the former is excellent. Even though some exchanges are a bit uneven, they are always easy to follow, and in places where the music has a role to play, dynamic contrasts are great. The action material sounds equally great on both tracks. The English translation is very good. Also, I really liked the size of the subtitles.

Pusher 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary - in this audio commentary, Nicolas Winding Refn discusses the conception, production, and success of Pusher with critic Peter Bradshaw. Some of the better information that is shared in the commentary addresses several choices that gave Pusher (and the other two films that came after it) its stylistic identity, the importance of realism in its visuals (and especially as preserved in cult films like Bad Lieutenant), and the different casting choices that were made.

• Days of Sin and Nights of Nymphomania (1963) - a little-seen Danish film about an ex-convict who is treated to a wild party by a few of his friends. Directed by Poul Nyrup, and starring Preben Nicolaises, Anders Dahlerup, and Annette Post. Fully restored in 4K. B&W. In Danish, with English subtitles. (92 min).

• Book -120-page book with new essays by Jamie Graham, Justin LaLiberty, Janine Pipe, Ariel Power-Schaub, Alison Taylor and Nadine Whitney, plus an excerpt from Scandinavian Blue by Jack Stevenson on the films of Poul Nyrup.

• Cards - five collectible art cards.

Pusher 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Before the 1990s, drug crime was not an issue in Scandinavia. It was only after local governments began accepting refugees from the Balkan Wars that the entire area irreversibly changed. Initially, it was characters like Milo who started flooding Scandinavia's big cities with drugs shipped from the Motherland, and then, after profits became substantial, the gangs took over. By the early 2000s, with even bigger numbers of immigrants coming from other places, Scandinavians began hearing about the no-go zones in their biggest cities -- like the ones in Sweden's Malmö and Gothenburg -- but it took another decade before police authorities publicly acknowledged that they had lost control of many places. Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher is about the early days of the irreversible transformation of Denmark. It is the first of three films in The Pusher Trilogy, which is also available on Blu-ray here. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.