Ruta hiena

This is excellent film about modern warfare with convincing battle scenes, ramped up tension and incredible locations. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Very hard to tell in Afghanistan as Canadian soldiers do their duty, to little effect. In my view it is a superior film to the much hyped American Sniper. The performances were all very convincing and Paul Gross's direction was swift and to the point. The atmosphere of working in a very foreign land for the Canadian soldiers is very apparent. I found I cared about what they were doing, as I was frankly trying to figure out their mission. If you enjoyed films like Zero Dark Thirty or The Hurt Locker, you should see this film.

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.

Can tell a lot of effort went into production, and a sincere effort was made at authenticity...but still comes off as a movie that doesn't take itself very seriously, played by actors who take themselves perhaps too seriously. At times I wasn't entirely sure this wasn't a deliberately tongue-in-cheek drama with the aim of a little awkward comic relief; however, neither one works well as it is neither here nor there. Perhaps soap-opera-ish would be a good descriptor in terms of overall production value, not content per se'.

The combat scenes, while not poorly acted or choreographed, still come off as a little bit staged. Sometimes it's just the little things, like uniforms not being quite dirty enough after soldiers were supposedly rolling around in the mountains for a few hours; sometimes the mountains look a little bit more like the Arizona Rockies than Afghanistan. Sometimes The Afghani villagers look a little bit too clean, well fed, and smooth-skinned to be actual Afghani villagers. The way the Taliban swarm en-masse, hail-mary style is just not how they tend to move tactically in the real world. Like I said, the little things. the sniper scope reticle they give us a peek through is, thankfully, not the usual nonsense with all sorts of colors and numbers and flashing lights, as is seen in some movies. it's not the standard Mil Dot reticle, but at least it's half believable.

Ultimately, on a budget, just so much can really be put into production. overall, not a terrible movie, perhaps as an amateur military historian who's watched more than my fair share of combat helmet cams, I'm a bit more tuned in to the minutiae. So be it...overall, I'd give it a 7 for effort, and a 5 for final product, so at 6 I think is a fair score.

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

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.