October 26th in Tampa, FL. This title was an iTunes rental that I watched on a plane from Chicago to Tampa. This is a British film that was released in the U.S. at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and received a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. Written and directed by Gerard Johnson, the film is about a unit of London detectives that rack up arrests but are really crooked. The unit's leader, Michael (Peter Ferdinando) and the team are working for a Turkish drug smuggling ring. Things go south early into the film when Michael's Turkish contact gets brutally slain by some Albanians who are moving in on the drug trade.
Michael is pursued by an overzealous internal affairs inspector who wants him in jail. Michael is transferred to a sex trade task force to take some attention of him and his team. He ends up investigating the same Albanians that took over the Turk's operation (if movies have taught me anything is that Albanian mobsters are not to be trifled with, unless your name is Bryan Mills). Despite that Michael is a terrible person, he tries to help Ariana (Elisa Lasowski) but it just gets her in more trouble. Eventually he rescues her because she can help put the Albanians away before they probably kill Michael. Remember that task force Michael was assigned too? That was all a ruse to set him up and let's just say that Michael doesn't handle it well.
This film is dark, gritty and very graphic. It's a good film with solid acting but it is basically an R rated version of The Shield. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Michael is the corrupt cop that has some good in him but he's in so deep he can't get out and he makes bad decisions yet somehow manages to escape until he runs out of luck. Hyena is worth watching but it's not breaking any new ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment