Hyena Road unlike other war movies

There are war movies that show the front line action and there are others that show the behind the scenes negotiating and strategizing.

And then there’s Hyena Road, a war movie unlike any other. It tries to show all facets of an armed conflict in the Middle East where everyone has their own objectives and understanding of things and they’re all different to those of the others involved.

And it works.

Writer/director/actor Paul Gross tackles this immense challenge with a deft hand. After Passchendaele, his most recent directorial effort, he decided that he needed to offer a new voice to the chorus surrounding a contemporary conflict. The war in Afghanistan is, in real life, a murky and violent conflict where nothing is really working out the way that anybody wants it to.

In the movie, the war is a confused affair where the guys with the guns aren’t the same guys with the brains. It centres on the Canadian military’s efforts to establish a road in an attempt to disrupt the Taliban’s insurgent campaign of invasion, terrorist attacks, and human trafficking.

Gross plays Capt. Pete Mitchell, an officer with army intelligence who understands that guns only solve some problems because killing often creates new ones. He tries to utilize a Canadian Armed Forces team led by Warrant Officer Ryan Sanders (Rossif Sutherland) to accomplish higher objectives than something as black and white as “killing the enemy” and “winning the game.” Sanders still has the same ideal of accomplishing his mission that Mitchell does, but the means to the ends for each are entirely different. The roads that each want to take are mutually exclusive in a way.

This is a powerhouse directorial effort that bears repeat viewings for its careful deconstruction of a complex situation. While Hyena Road suffers slightly from too much voiceover, it wins handsomely for its considered approach and sterling performances including Gross himself, along with Sutherland of the famous Canadian Sutherlands, and especially Niamatullah Arghandabi as a character known as the Ghost. His physical appearance is captivating enough, but his charisma and nuanced performance is stellar. His enigmatic character has much to say, even if he doesn’t have much dialogue. A remarkable achievement especially since he isn’t a trained actor.

After having premiered at the Edmonton International Film Festival last fall, it now gets its due for the Reel Mondays series.