Hyena (2015)
Certified: 18
Duration: 112 minutes
Directed by: Gerard Johnson
Starring: Peter Ferdinando, Stephen Graham, Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Elisa Lasowski.
KRS Releasing Ltd

Gerard Johnson and Peter Ferdinando return to the screen after the harrowing and muscular 2009 film Tony.

With Hyena, Johnson takes viewers to the underbelly of the British crime world. It’s a doozy sight indeed, enough to make you cringe and wonder what lies behind the doors and glitter of London.

The film does not spare any punches and is relentless in its approach. It’s as if you are plunged knee deep in a sewer and left to wade in it. Unlike many a modern crime movie, there is no element of cool here. And the film is shot in such a matter-of-fact manner that it looks very real.

This is a tale of cops and robbers where the difference between them is so paper-thin that one cheers the cops on for the simple reason that the alternative – i.e. the villains – are not much better.

As a film, Hyena is comparable in tone and thrust to the brutal classic The Bad Lieutenant (1992). From the start in a scene shot in eerie blue, Hyena shows four men carrying out a raid on a nightclub. Their manner and style is one of hoodlums and gangsters, but it later turns out they are policemen. But these cops have only drink and drugs on their mind, not law and order.

Peter Ferdinando is Michael Logan, a police officer who is up to his neck in corruption and violence. Michael has invested £100,000 into the setting up of a drug-trafficking route that will bring in drugs and women into the land he is supposed to be keeping safe. That is until his path crosses that of Nikolla and Rezar Kabashi (Orli Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi), Albanian brothers who bring down bloodily his Turkish partner. With their intrusion, Michael needs to keep them quiet.

Then a man named David Knight (Stephen Graham), who had once clashed with Michael because of a rape case, enters the scene. He returns after some time abroad and is now successful and ready to bring down the Albanians. So it seems that Michael needs to make some very quick decisions.

Fernandino brings to the screen a sick and poisoned character in Logan. There is no attempt to give him a fresh and redemptive quality or tone. He is what he is – a bad cop; he knows it and revels in it. He is the film’s core, and wanting to, or not, you are hooked as a spectator watching him do his thing.

Through all this, the film propels itself like the urban nightmare it is. Under the cold, restrained cinematography of Benjamin Kracun, Hyena is a visuallyarresting picture that underlines the shadows and darkness of the soul in which the characters live.

It is to the director’s merit that this film somersaults over the hurdles thrown its way and pummels its audience heftily into watchful and attentive submission as it builds up an atmosphere that is almost designed and acts in this respect as a wave that will threaten to drown its audience.