SummaryMichael (Peter Ferdinando) is a ruthless undercover cop targeting London's most violent drug traffickers. He and his team aren't above taking their cut from the criminals they're charged with investigating — but when he's threatened with exposure, he's forced to rapidly shift his loyalties and sell out his allies in order to stay alive. [Tribeca ... Read More
Directed By:Gerard Johnson
Written By:Gerard Johnson
Hyena
Metascore
Mixed or Average
56
User score
Generally Favorable
6.2
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
56
41% Positive
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
47% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
12% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Mar 5, 2015
80
Hyena is startling, claustrophobic and penetrating in its analysis of the blurred lines involved in doing good.
Apr 30, 2015
70
Writer-director Gerard Johnson resists all impulses to please the crowd. The graphic sex and violence never feel gratuitous, and there's something interesting in the way he deliberately denies his characters and the viewers any reprieve.
Apr 28, 2015
70
The film's convoluted moral trajectory to hell may be as unoriginal as quoting Taxi Driver, and the pervasive violent menace can be needlessly punishing (including a drugged sexual assault), but as stylish, scorched-earth entertainment, it'll get you in its teeth.
Apr 28, 2015
60
There’s nothing out of order here—the locales are appropriately dingy and atmospheric, the lead character is compellingly rotten, the plot tightens to a vise squeeze in the third act—but every beat that isn’t provided by The The strikes exactly where it’s expected.
Mar 5, 2015
60
Gerard Johnson's sophomore feature might look on the outset like the type of London crime thriller usually populated by Jason Statham, but it's more emotionally complex than its outset gives it credit for.
Apr 28, 2015
40
When in doubt, the director cranks up the assaultively reverberant score from po-faced '80s rockers The The (aka Matt Johnson, the director's brother), which at least provides intermittent pep to this increasingly torpid wallow in the moral mud.
Apr 27, 2015
38
The Gerard Johnson film's blanket cynicism is its most shopworn quality of all.
User score
Generally Favorable
6.2
50% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
33% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
17% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Nov 18, 2022
6
The movie is about the immigrant gangs consisting of Turks and Albanians and drug addicted cops, taking place in England. A so-called protector of the law, in the lead role, who is losing his sense of "ethics" gradually. It is a maze with trap within trap, an event triggering the other, this time even more complex. Being 'Big John' is disappearing in every second; It becomes then blurry who is protecting the law, and even makes you forget the definition of the law, in a pretty dark atmosphere. Nicholas Winding Refn described the movie as the future of noir genre. Les Arcs owns the prize for the best actor in Edinburgh - also has two nominations for the best British film and Sitges best film.
Production Company:
- British Film Institute (BFI)
- Film4
- Ingenious Film Partners
- Lipsync
- Number 9 Films
- Riggins Productions
Release Date:May 1, 2015
Duration:1 h 52 m
Tagline:There's 33,000 in his gang. His gang is the police.
Awards
Les Arcs European Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Golden Trailer Awards
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Festival International du film Policier de Beaune
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
