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Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is simply brilliant in this uncompromising drama. Covered in tattoos, the word RESPECT inked in four inch letters on the back of his shaven skull, his character Tonny is the type you'd cross a motorway to avoid. Pusher II follows his release from prison, a doomed drug deal, the discovery he's a father, and his turbulent relationship with his own dad, Copenhagen's toughest gangster.

Just as he did with the first Pusher film, writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn refuses to pull a single punch in his depiction of a criminal underworld that is anything but glamorous. Drugs and violence enliven the daily lives of a group of characters who are essentially pathetic chancers, and Tonny's seedy existence - like his shorn skull - calls to mind the kind of bleak despair shared by Trainspotting's Renton or Romper Stomper's Hando. A plot that tumbles through various criminal misadventures shows Tonny for a figure of ridicule among his peers.

"AN INCREASINGLY TRAGIC TALE"

Winding Refn's skilful direction and his ability to capture the gentle humour and tough breaks of underclass life call to mind the realist drama of the late, great Alan Clarke. Against all odds, Tonny becomes a sympathetic hero in an increasingly tragic tale. It's not hard to spot the need that drives his self-destructive behaviour: it's practically written all over his face - or at least the back of his head.

In Danish with English subtitles.