Hyena Road (2015) Reviews

• Excellent War Movie

  briantaylor-264722015-10-14

  Well done to Paul Gross and the cast of Hyena Road for creating an authentic Canadian war movie. Being a Canadian Army officer, I had to go see this one in the theater. It was an opportune time as I was able to go with my son, a 2nd year economics student home on his Fall break. The movie was entertaining, emotional and educational. Hyena Road weaves the perspectives of war fighters into an telling story of the character of the Canadian experience in Kandahar Province. It keeps you engaged throughout with a mix of action, soldiering and the very human dimension to conflict. "Inside the wire, we think about what to do outside the wire. We get it wrong fifty percent of the time which means we get it right the other fifty percent of the time" and " We have to remember that the end state is not for children to fly kites" were themes that stuck with us as we drove away from the theater. Thanks Paul, Major Brian Taylor, Canadian Army

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• Excellent Film. See it.

  gkpearson412015-10-10

  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.

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• Big-Screen worthy

  uncle_booga2015-10-17

  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.

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• Excellent movie about Canada's involvement in Afghanistan

  nickcw-12016-01-29

  Paul Gross took a few risks in making this movie about Canada's military campaign in Afghanistan's Kandahar province--"the birthplace of the Taliban" and pretty much a hornet's nest for the tiny Canadian NATO force that tried to secure the region for five long years. The movie is thoughtful and subtle, rather than offering beginning-to-end war movie entertainment, and it focuses on people and some of the impossible personal and professional choices they're forced to make in complex and unforgiving situations--on both sides of the cultural divide between occupier and occupied. In this the movie isn't afraid to show that some of the all-too-human choices turn out to be the wrong ones, or that the protagonists can declare personal guiding principles and then contradict them in their professional response to circumstances. For the most part, the movie avoids setting up two-dimensional characters in a good guys-bad guys scenario; however, it failed in this respect regarding the Taliban, who were reduced to nonentities worthy only of being killed wholesale--much like the Somalis in Blackhawk Down. As in Blackhawk Down, and a slew of similar tales about recent Western military action against foreign countries, Hyena Road treats the local resistance to foreign occupation as almost an affront to the well-meaning efforts of "our" noble warriors. But presumably it wasn't made for Afghan audiences. To fully appreciate the movie, it helps if you know something about Afghanistan's past forty years of foreign military occupation and civil war, and also if you know something about Canada's military--where the personal and the professional are never far apart. I believe this quality is one of the things that makes the Canadian Forces so good in the field: they're not trained to be machines; they're trained to be fully human warriors--which I felt the movie illustrated very well in the relationships between the Canadian protagonists and the veteran Afghan fighter, with admirable understatement by Mr. Gross. Hyena Road is less entertainment than it is an education about aspects of personal warriorship and about Western nations' activities in foreign realms most of us know nothing about, but about which many of us hold strong opinions nevertheless (oh yes, and the action scenes are pretty riveting and authentic-looking!). I think Paul Gross succeeded very well in what he set out to do with Hyena Road.

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• Hyena Road: a new Black Hawk Down.

  niutta-enrico2016-01-28

  This film is catching, engaging. Characters are nice and well played: a sharp sniper unit, a beautiful lady captain, bad and good Afghans, a smart intelligence officer… in the end I felt a little bit Canadian (at least in the heart) myself. The title road perhaps actually exists, or perhaps not, it's not clear. The Toronto Sun says that 'Hyena' is one of the nicknames of a road Canadian troops built in Kandahar province during the war... In any case it's not Ridley Scott's but watching this film I had the same feeling of true war (true fighting) I had watching 'Black Hawk Down'. And, although due, this is a big compliment nonetheless.

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