Pusher III: I’m the Angel of Death (2005): A-

Capping his Pusher trilogy with its most gripping and incisive installment, Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t provide closure to his saga with I’m the Angel of Death; rather, he expands its overarching vision of underworld nastiness, the universal yearning for escape, and the cruel hand of fate. Refn’s multi-character tale here turns its attention to Bosnian drug dealer Milo (Zlatko Buric), whose visits to support groups to maintain his five-day sobriety are hopelessly undone by his work orchestrating (and semi-competently cooking dinner for) a lavish 25th birthday party for his spoiled daughter Milena (Marinela Dekic). As if pulling off that event weren’t enough, he’s also compelled to manage a botched ecstasy deal that has him simultaneously hunting for wannabe-big shot Mohammed (Ilyas Agac) and trying to deal with the Albanian to whom he owes money. Refn’s hovering, spinning camera – so often moving with impulsive freedom, and yet constantly capturing well-framed visions of camaraderie and callousness – generates its usual high-wired dread. Yet it’s the director’s prolonged detail-oriented staging that’s truly energized, especially during a lengthy sequence in which Milo is forced by his Albanian benefactors, who now see him as a permanent indentured servant, to wait on them while the sale of a teen prostitute is consummated, a scene that boasts near-blistering slow-burn intensity. As Milo is reduced from being a loving (and drug-free) father to a cold, vicious monster faced with greed, duplicity and brutality from family and colleagues alike, Buric’s sweaty, flabby countenance goes stone-cold vacant, eventually turning heroin-induced granite as he’s driven – in a finale during which Refn lays bare the inhuman butchery that defines the crime world – to abandon dreams of rehab, roll up his sleeves, and get his hands dirty carrying out his bloody profession.