Hyena

A hard-hitting and cynical thriller that’s more London To Brighton than The Sweeney, Hyena is the latest from writer-director Gerard Johnson and is a major new talent.

Set on London’s seedy streets, Hyena follows a drug task force headed up by Michael (Ferdinando) as they navigate a fine line between police and drug smuggler. The drug- addicted Michael has been working the gig so long he’s got his own angles going and when his Turkish contacts are killed/arrested, he moves onto the Albanians to continue business. However, their treatment of a former stripper (Lasowski) in their charge awakens a latent humanity in the numb detective and Michael seizes the chance to do good for once, just as internal affairs (Dormer) starts asking awkward questions and former newbie Knight (Graham) has asked him to help hunt down the very people Michael is in cahoots with.

Hyena follows the same route as Abel Ferrera’s Bad Lieutenant. Working with bad guys so long, the good cop loses his perspective and descends into the nightmare world he’s supposed to police, only for a case to offer one shot at redemption. Like Bad Lieutenant it’s impossible to see which way the unsettling Hyena will go from one moment to the next and its ending is a real surprise – not that it’s a twist but it has the balls to stick to its immoral guns.

Gerard Johnson is out to draw parallels between the two worlds - if one is to really understand a criminal, one must become a criminal - but he doesn’t overdo it or rely on cliché. The director introduces Michael by having him drive through the empty London streets to pick up his crew, before making for a nightclub where they trash the place, beat up the patrons, and make off with the cocaine. It’s only in the next scene that the audience realise they are police. Later, the bare-chested Albanians are sprayed with blood as they carve up an unfortunate in a bath, which contrasts nicely with the stoned detectives spraying themselves with tomato ketchup.

With finely-crafted dialogue, which only reveals intricate backstories and the fragmented relationships when Johnson is ready, Hyena gives one the impression that we’re in the hands of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing. Ferdinando, who played the titular serial killer in Johnson’s Tony, shows that that edgy performance was no fluke but Orli Shuka as an Albanian thug catches the eye too.

Hyena crawls under the skin and stays there.