Hyena Road

It explores the depth of the decision making in a never ending war. It shows how the "right call" may not be the right one in the long run and how its not black and white as people like to see it. Paul Gross creates the amazing story from great research. The love story is a bit hard to watch and Sutherland's acting leaves a lot to be desired, but it tells a story that needed to be told, with built in drama, twists and great comedic relief.

One thing that makes "Hyena Road" excellent is that the film continues a cinematic and literary tradition of the Canadian ability to fight back, of intelligent opposition. In popular literature this goes back as far as Robert Service. In film it goes back to the (serious) Royal Mounties movies and to such Hollywood blockbusters as "The Wild North" (1952) and Stewart Grangers' character of Jules Vincent. Because Canada has become such an appendage to the USA in modern times we forget how outstanding the fighting ability of these people and their institutions can be. I do Not write this as a Canadian, mind you. But as an objective, non-Canadian who was very impressed by the combative intelligence and cross-cultural savvy of "Hyena Road". This is a sleeper. This is a keeper.

Ryan (Rossif Sutherland) is a Canadian sniper who tries not to think of his targets as human. He's also in love with his colleague, Jennifer (Christine Horne) who together try to lessen the constant danger that comes with their jobs. When Ryan and his team Travis, Hickie, and Tank (Allan Hawco, David Richmond-Peck, and Karl Campbell) are surrounded by the enemy, they take refuge in a small village. In this village, they meet a legendary former mujahid known as the Ghost (Neamat Arghandabi), who saves their lives. When Ryan tells intelligence officer Pete (Paul Gross) about him, Pete insists on meeting him. He agrees to help them but the kidnapping of two girls from his village threatens to complicate their mission.

If you didn't know already, I am a Canadian. This film depicts (more or less) our army. Maybe it exaggerates the level of our involvement in Afghanistan but it probably would have been a very boring film otherwise. I have seen a lot of war films but I don't think that I have seen any Canadian war films (because all of the others are predominately American) so this would be a first for me. It ultimately makes no difference what country the film comes from. For a war film, the story isn't too original here so don't expect any surprises in this one. I found the pacing in this one to be a little weird where character seemed to alternate between being out of their base and engaging Taliban and being within the base and just talking to each other about things. I was hoping for a little more fighting because the moments when the characters were within the base to be quite boring because I did not particularly care about the characters besides the character of Pete played by Paul Gross since I thought he had the most depth when compared to all of the other characters who had little to no depth and I enjoyed his interactions with his Afghani friend Abdul (Hekmat Bavari). It's funny that this is the case seeing that Paul Gross wrote and directed the film. I thought the war scenes were well done in that they were well shot and I liked the sound design involved. They also did a good job capturing the tension involved with being a sniper and the uncertainty after things went wrong (and they sometimes did). Despite the base scenes being boring and not caring about most of the characters, I still thought Rossif Sutherland was okay as Ryan, albeit being cliché almost the entire time. Christine Horne as Jennifer was okay but I didn't think her character was necessary to the story (except for something I will not spoil) as it did not add anything to it and her relationship with Ryan did not work seeing that they had no chemistry together. What annoyed me was during certain scenes involving conversations between Afghani characters, there were no subtitles so I had no idea what they were saying. The only time I did was when there was a translator in the scene. I found the tone of the film drastically changed near the end which did not make sense to me. Overall. this comes nowhere near the great war films but it should moderately entertain.

Score: 6.5/10 keithlovesmovies.com

I found the film to be somewhat adrift as far as the theme and the storyline. There didn't seem to be much of a resolution, rather a way to end the film. If it's supposed to be an analogy of the current situation in Afghanistan, well we get that "It's not one war, it's a lot of little wars" message earlier on. It would make a superb pilot for a series centered around the Intel guy (Paul Gross). I found the scenes within the CP interesting: radio procedure has changed dramatically in the 40 years since I was in the infantry. But the only scene I found totally authentic was the "dance in the desert" scene. This sort of thing does happen spontaneously within a tight knit group. And the patrol procedure and snipercraft were off in my opinion. The "Ghost" character was my favorite. I liked the fact that no subtitles were used and that, like the soldiers, we had to listen to the interpreter. I would liked to have seen his character developed. The artillery scenes were authentic and dramatic, but it was the only time I've seen the gunners get a target round on the first shot. The small arms combat sequences were excellent. Total confusion like always. All in all, I enjoyed it, and I recommend it.

Well made movie. Lacked Hollywood glitz, it was very believable and I did enjoy the character development. I felt a need to give a total "neutrals" review of this. This will be a movie I return to from time to time.

The plot was good; and in that forsaken land of Afghanistan, I really got to like the Afghanistan people as well, well, at least a lot of them, not the terrorists of course. That war is so brutal and it's been in the upswing the last few years, it certainly seems.

Nice third world vibe. I could easily name some much more well known war movies I think this is better than. What's the fuss?