General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Pusher II

Pusher II (also released as With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II) is a 2004 Danish crime drama directed and written by Nicolas Winding Refn, the second film in his Pusher trilogy. It follows Tonny, a small-time criminal played by Mads Mikkelsen, who is released from a Danish prison and tries to win the respect of his father, the gangster Smeden, while sinking deeper into debt in Copenhagen's underworld.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	25 December 2004 in Danish cinemas¹
Director and writer	Nicolas Winding Refn, his first sequel to Pusher (1996)²^•³
Lead cast	Mads Mikkelsen (Tonny), Leif Sylvester Petersen (Smeden), Anne Sørensen (Charlotte), Zlatko Burić (Milo)¹
Runtime	96 minutes per Danish and festival listings; some international listings give 100 minutes⁴^•²
Setting	Copenhagen's criminal underworld, centered on the Amager district⁵
Awards	Bodil Award and Robert Award for Best Actor (Mads Mikkelsen), 2005; the Robert Awards for Best Danish Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay went to King's Game and Brothers, respectively⁶^•¹⁸
Critical score	100% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 11 critics; 85% audience score⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Tonny is released after a 13-month prison sentence and returns to Copenhagen's criminal milieu, where he learns two things at once: he has fathered a child, and he owes money to his father, Smeden, described in Danish listings as the most feared gangster on Amager.⁵ He tries, clumsily but hopefully, to take responsibility for the boy and build some stability, and he goes to his father to pay his dues and regain his respect.¹^•⁴

Smeden, who runs a car workshop that also steals and resells vehicles, gives his son a chance at work but treats him with contempt, favoring Tonny's childhood friend Ø instead.³ Every attempt Tonny makes to impress his father lands him in deeper trouble; the Melbourne International Film Festival synopsis notes that he impulsively steals a Ferrari Testarossa with a tracking device and brings it home "like an eager-to-please puppy."⁴ By the end Tonny faces a life-threatening debt to the very man he has struggled to make proud, and must choose between the world that is destroying him and an attempt to break free.¹ The IFC Center synopsis adds that he must also contribute to raising a baby boy who may or may not be his own, while battling the scorn of those around him and his own drug-fueled delirium.²

Place in the trilogy

Pusher II is the middle chapter of Refn's Pusher trilogy, between Pusher (1996) and Pusher III (2005). Each sequel centers on a different character from the first film rather than continuing a single plot: the second belongs to Tonny, Frank's associate from the original, and the third to the Serbian kingpin Milo played by Zlatko Burić.⁸ The trilogy as a whole premiered together at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005.⁹

Refn has said he wanted to tell more stories from the criminal milieu without simply remaking Pusher on an American scale, and that he needed a film that could rescue his company's finances.¹⁰ That need was acute: his English-language thriller Fear X (2003) failed at the box office and forced Refn and his production company into bankruptcy, and he made Pusher II and Pusher III back to back to clear his debts.¹¹^•¹² The production struggle is documented in the 2006 documentary Gambler.¹¹

Production and style

The film was produced by Henrik Danstrup for NWR Productions, shot by cinematographer Morten Søborg, edited by Anne Østerud and Janus Billeskov Jansen, with production design by Rasmus Thjellesen and music by Peter Peter (Peter Schneidermann).¹³ It was shot on 35 mm color stock.⁴

Like the rest of the trilogy, it uses light handheld cameras and a near-documentary tone, with choppy editing and constant tension, to follow characters in the drug trade who sink into a spiral of debt and bad decisions.¹⁴ Le Monde reads the second film as the trilogy's statement on blood ties: a monstrous father destroying a son unable to measure up to him.¹⁴

Reception

Danish critics received the film strongly on release. Kim Skotte of Politiken gave it five of six and called it Refn's clearly best film to date; Ekstra Bladet awarded six of six, praising Mikkelsen's performance in what it called a classical tragedy at the core of an action drama.¹⁵ The Melbourne festival's catalog wrote that Mikkelsen "delivers the performance of his career as the luckless Tonny."⁴

At the 2005 Danish film awards, Mikkelsen won both the Bodil Award and the Robert Award for best male lead, but the Robert Award for Best Danish Feature Film went to King's Game and the Robert Award for Best Original Screenplay went to Brothers.⁶^•¹⁶^•¹⁸ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer from 11 critics and an 85% audience score from more than 5,000 ratings.⁷

Legacy

Pusher II was barely seen outside Denmark on release but gained a second life after Drive (2011) made Refn an international name and Mikkelsen a star; it is frequently cited as the strongest installment of the trilogy, and the image of Mikkelsen's shaved head with "RESPECT" tattooed across the back of his skull has become the trilogy's most referenced visual.¹¹ A 4K restoration was released on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray by Second Sight Films in 2025, with a new commentary track on Pusher II by Refn and Catherine Shoard.¹⁷ The film returned to US theaters in a 4K restoration, distributed by Magnolia, in 2026.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released in the 2000s › Released 2000 to 2004

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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