Expands [the trilogy's] overarching vision of underworld nastiness, the universal yearning for escape, and the cruel hand of fate.

If Pusher III is the trilogy's least effective, that may be because the soured-deal plot line is by now a given, and its theme is the simplest.

Gut-churningly nasty

For all the black comedy, and catharsis, in the script, there is still a fiendish evil lurking behind the story.