Hyena feels like it was made right after writer/director Gerard Johnson got his Michael Mann starter kit. This gritty crime drama, about a corrupt narcotics detective navigating the West London underworld, contains a number of Mann's visual motifs -- saturated colors, ethereal cityscapes, rain-slick streets, an early shot of the protagonist looking out pensively over an urban jungle, even a title card similar to the one for 1981's Thief -- but ripping off a master's style isn't the same thing as making your own great movie. Hyena has none of the nuance or poetry that makes Mann's films so memorable, and instead it settles for being an utterly derivative thriller about macho behavior run amok.
Michael Logan (Peter Ferdinando) is said corrupt narcotics detective, who has a never-quite-explained relationship with key figures in West London's drug trade. On the one hand, he's in league with the Turkish criminals who run it, and is profiting handsomely from this alliance; on the other hand, we're told that he's untouchable within his police department because he gets results. Unfortunately, this cushy arrangement comes to a violent end when his Turkish contact is hacked to pieces by a pair of Albanian brothers who are looking to take over the local drug business. Michael is forced to approach these new players and see if he can make the same deal with them, but he's alarmed by the extent of their brutality -- not just their capacity for violence, but the fact that they're involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution. Complicating matters further, Michael's new boss (Stephen Graham) is someone he's clashed with in the past, and an internal-affairs investigator (Richard Dormer) keeps insinuating that he's close to bringing his corrupt activities to light.
The plot of Hyena doesn't exactly unfold with the ruthless precision of a great thriller; it moves in fits and starts, and by the end, it's basically one scene after another of people screaming at each other or meeting a violent end. It's tough to care about the fates of anyone involved, since the film keeps hammering home the idea that the world is a miserable place and everyone is corrupt. The only exceptions might be the two female characters: Michael's long-suffering girlfriend Lisa (MyAnna Buring), and Ariana (Elisa Lasowski), a prostitute he rescues from the clutches of the Albanians in a rare good deed. While both of them are depicted as less awful than the men around them, they're given little to do except react to Michael's actions and hope that he's ultimately able to save them.
Despite its overwhelming dourness, the movie does come to life occasionally. The wordless montage of Michael and his fellow police officers trashing a nightclub and confiscating the drugs and cash they find is a terrific opening, albeit one that hints at a movie that's more of an adrenaline rush than what follows. The look of the film is grungy and lived-in, with a handful of smart details that flesh out the characters -- the Albanians' official business front is a cell-phone store in a rundown mall, and we see them there for a holiday celebration with their families. And there's a single moment of levity in the story, when Michael screams on his phone while on the bus, as the other passengers stare at him in disbelief.
That's really what Hyena needed more of: a sense of life outside of the criminal underworld, some degree of light to make the darkness seem threatening by comparison. Who cares who lives or dies when there isn't a moment in the movie when it feels like a happy ending is remotely possible for anyone? And the film's actual ending is so abrupt and unsatisfying that it seems less like an ambiguous conclusion than that the filmmakers ran out of time, money, or interest. A bummer from start to finish, Hyena adds nothing new to its genre.