BLEEDER

Sometimes you see work by a young director apparently born to hold a camera in his hand ? and such is the impact of this second production from 28-year-old Nicolas Winding Refn, after his edgy debut “Pusher.” A Dane answer to “Mean Streets” with a side order of “Clerks,” BLEEDER goes from wry humor to urban lyricism to horrific violence in nothing flat, and you can't tear your eyes away from the dissolution of close-knit young buddies stuck in the groove of dull jobs and limited horizons in Denmark. Leo, Louis, and Lenny come together almost daily for B-grade action and horror fests put on by Lenny's employer at the city's coolest video store. For Lenny films are the only way to relate to life. Geeky debates about who's tougher, Steven Segal or Fred Williamson (of “Hell Up in Harlem” and other blaxploitation greats), dominate his existence ? and leave him with very few social skills when he falls hard for Lea, a lonely blonde working in a diner. Leo is already hitched, more than he wants to be, to live-in girlfriend Louise, whose pregnancy fills him with ill-concealed revulsion, for her, himself, and a lifestyle with no perceptible future. As Leo's behavior grows more and more unstable, Louise's protective racist-skinhead brother Louis rises to her defense in a cathartic finale that hits harder than the all the fantasy gore in Lenny's treasured tape collection. (In Danish with English subtitles.)