Review: ‘Hyena’

An extraordinarily brutal British police corruption thriller, “Hyena” (now at Facets) prowls around the flats, alleys and dirty doings of the west London drug underworld. The movie’s Albanian criminals make the vermin in the “Taken” movies look like the male chorus of “State Fair.” Then again, in writer-director Gerard Johnson’s film, the cops are scarcely less malignant.

In this world the nobility, such as it is, belongs to stringy-haired, coked-up detective Michael Logan, played with world-weary, bleary-eyed authority by Peter Ferdinando. When we first see Logan and his colleagues conducting a drug bust in a strip club, we don’t know which side of the law they’re on. Logan, working every side of every street, is a secret investor in a cocaine smuggling operation run by Turks based in London. Then the Albanians take over, and Logan must ingratiate himself with his new associates, while convincing his superiors that he’s close to a very big arrest.

“They do good work, and they become untouchable. But this isn’t the ’80s,” one smug policeman mutters to another in “Hyena,” referring to Logan and his tactics. Ferdinando scrambles through the movie, and Logan’s conscience becomes sidetracked by the Albanian sex slave (Elisa Lasowski) who appeals to him for help. Nearly every scene in Johnson’s sleekly scuzzy picture is bathed in blue light and smoke courtesy of cinematographer Benjamin Kracun, signaling a toxic atmosphere.

Much of the action defies watching. There are several moments of torture or dismemberment or rape where you think this is more than we need to see, in the name of shock or dramatic impact. At its most palatable the film recalls “The Long Good Friday”; at its harshest, it’s a grotty cousin to “The Bad Lieutenant.” There’s enough filmmaking intelligence to guide “Hyena” through its worst excesses, however. With his baleful eyes, Ferdinando suggests a younger Ciaran Hinds. British crime films on the whole have it over a lot of American equivalents, partly because they have the actors, and partly because they get at the essential, paradoxical allure of the stories — we can’t even look, sometimes, yet because we believe in the human beings on the screen, we must. At least when the grisliest bits are over.

mjphillips@tribpub.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

“Hyena”- 3 stars

No MPAA rating (extreme violence, nudity, language, drug use)

Running time: 1:52

Opens: Friday, continues through Thursday May 7 at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton Av.; facets.org