Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Now on VOD is Hyena, a high-octane crime thriller featuring Tarantino-caliber violence minus the pitch-black humor. From writer-director Gerard Johnson comes a corrupt-cop tale that blends the bare bones of James Mangold’s Cop Land, the aesthetics of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and the sheer horror of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, forming a concoction of a crime drama that’s in many ways familiar but, at the same time, a whole new breed of bleak.
Michael (Peter Ferdinando) is corrupt police at its finest: an undercover who helps himself to cuts of the drugs he confiscates while still managing to straddle both sides of the law. After witnessing the brutal murder of one of his drug partners, Michael’s conscience bleeds through; he realizes that he’s the only one who can bridge the two worlds of the dealers and the police to help bring an end to the violence that’s plaguing the streets of London. What he discovers within the city’s grim underworld, however, is an even more dismal situation involving a human trafficking ring run by a ruthless set of Albanian brothers. But when his sergeant, David Knight (Stephen Graham of Boardwalk Empire), closes in on what Michael’s really been up to, our deeply flawed protagonist must risk betraying his closest allies in the squad and on the streets in order to make it out alive.
Johnson’s second feature premiered today on iTunes and on-demand platforms prior to its Tribeca Film Festival premiere as one of the New York film brand’s household features. Hyena has already created plenty of buzz in its previous festival circuits, including at Toronto, Stiges, and Edinburgh where similar conclusions have sprinkled various reviews: this flick is dark.
Though not quite a date-night pick, Hyena is a film that unapologetically examines the turmoil of drug and human trafficking that creates a chain reaction of violence in our society, reified tenfold through Johnson’s documentary-like direction and Ferdinando’s raw performance. If you’re a fan of smart, honest grit, watch Hyena on-demand today before it hits theaters May 1.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1A2e7Vx8A]
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Photos: Tribeca Film
