Pusher III 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Pusher III 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 14, 2025

Nicolas Winding Refn's "Pusher III" (2005) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Second Sight. The supplemental features on the release include audio commentary by Nicolas Winding Refn and critic Alan Jones, and Poul Nyrup's film "Gutter Heroes" (1965). In Danish and Serbian, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

The final of the three Pusher films is the best. It shares plenty of the twisty humor that flourishes in the second film, but it is substantially darker, casually acknowledging the irreversible erosion of contemporary Denmark. It hits harder than the first film because it goes even further while exposing a nightmarish reality that many prominent voices loved to argue was just a boogeyman manufactured by fringe politicians.

This time, Nicolas Winding Refn’s camera begins following Milo (Zlatko Buric), the Serbian drug dealer who went after Frank (Kim Bodnia) in the first film and participated in a botched deal with Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) and one of his close friends in the second film. Milo is well ahead of Frank, Tonny, and quite possibly everyone else who imports and sells drugs in Copenhagen, but he is still a small-timer. It is why he is enrolled in a community program for recovering drug addicts, but continues to feed his habit. It is why he frequently negotiates deals with new wannabe drug dealers, also imports from the Balkan countries, looking to establish themselves. It is why he routinely improvises to find solutions for compromising situations that a big-timer will avoid like the plague.

During one such compromising situation -- involving a shady Albanian character and a Polish amateur pimp trying to sell a miserable Polish girl to a local brothel owner -- coinciding with his daughter’s (Marinela Dekic) birthday party, Milo is forced to seek help from Radovan (Slavko Labovic), his former right-hand man, who has walked away from the drug business and opened a tiny ethnic diner. An improvised solution allows Milo to move on with his life, but not before he discovers that his drug habit is stronger than him, and his daughter is itching to become his partner.

As a character study, which it is not, the final Pusher film is quite mediocre. Everything Milo does is part of the same old and predictable cycle that all drug dealers like him participate in. It is only a matter of time before he is forced out of this cycle, either by an envious competitor or the inevitable overdose. (The latter seems more likely. In several sequences, Milo’s brain repeatedly sends obvious signals to him that what he ingests is already too much).

A lot happens around Milo that is part of a bigger, much more interesting and, sadly, accurate story. It is Copenhagen’s story, and the story of the biggest Scandinavian cities. Copenhagen is portrayed as a dangerous playground for various ethnic gangs, many operating beyond Scandinavia as well, who are already coming after solo players like Milo and moving into other illegal businesses. These are the same gangs that will soon create the notorious no-go zones.

The finale suggests that Milo already sees the future. Standing in front of a massive empty pool, Milo does not look like a winner, anticipating a better future. He is jaded and appears defeated, likely having realized that he has gone as far as his plays have been good for.

Refn’s direction is confident and efficient. However, one could easily make a good case that a lot of the hand-held camera movement is somewhat overdone.

Pusher III 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Second Sight's 4K Blu-ray release of Pusher III 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.

Even though Pusher II and Pusher III were shot at approximately the same time, and have similar stylistic appearances, I think that the latter looks a little bit better in native 4K. Some of this superiority has to do with the fact that a lot of the indoor footage is lit more convincingly. However, I must concede that the fast-moving hand-held camera footage also hides plenty of the inconsistencies that are noticeable on the native 4K presentations of the previous two films. Delineation, clarity, and depth range from very good to excellent. I can see again why Dolby Vision and HDR grades were avoided. There is some unique stylization work that already darkens some of the indoor footage quite a lot, and there are tricky highlights that look in very particular ways, too. It is not difficult to guess that Dolby Vision and HDR grades would have introduced significant changes in these areas. Image stability is excellent. I did not encounter any encoding anomalies to report in our review.

Pusher III 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 substantial portions of Serbian). Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.

I chose the original DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. If I repost the comments I left in the audio section of our review of Pusher II, they will sum up perfectly how I feel about the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track on this release. It sounded excellent on my system, and I cannot see how the Dolby Atmos track improves what it does in any meaningful way. You can experiment with both tracks, but I could not be happier with the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Also, I thought that the English translation was outstanding.

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

• Commentary - this audio commentary was recorded by Nicolas Winding Refn and critic Alan Jones.

• Gutter Heroes (1965) - a little-seen Danish film about several juvenile criminals. Directed by Poul Nyrup, and starring Erik Chris, Connie Petit, Poul Martin, and Birgit Hansen. Fully restored in 4K. B&W. In Danish, with English subtitles. (98 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 III 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Drug dealers like Milo have a short lifespan because they play the same game and break the same rules to replace each other. It is irrelevant whether they are in Copenhagen, Naples, or New York. However, in the past, a lot of people argued that places like Copenhagen could never be like Naples and New York, shaming other people who warned that bad policies were inevitably going to make the impossible possible. Sadly, Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries are very different places now, precisely because they allowed characters like Milo to move there, organize, and prosper. I think that Pusher III is the most effective of the three films in The Pusher Trilogy because it correctly predicted the future. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.