British director Gerard Johnson's gritty thriller about an amoral cop who has to extricate himself from a deadly situation of his own making, packs the necessary punch to seemingly place it amidst the ranks of such raw British crime thrillers as Get Carter and The Long Good Friday.

Moving with ease through London's electric-blue nightlife, propelled by greed and hungrily seizing on any opportunity for grift or graft, vice cop Michael Logan (Peter Ferdinando) is a feral scavenger in a dirty world. Leading a special task force targeting London’s most notorious drug traffickers, he and his team aren’t above taking their cut from the criminals they are tasked to bring down. In Logan’s world, the line between infiltration and personal benefit is increasingly blurred. When the arrival on the scene of two brutal Albanian brothers force Logan to betray establish alliances the rules of the game are thrown into flux. Things become stickier still when Logan is targeted by an internal affairs investigator with a grudge, and his old colleague David (Stephen Graham) is assigned to head up a task force charged with busting his new cohorts. Faced with a rapidly esculating and increasingly desperate set of circumstances, Logan is forced to impulsively shift loyalties and sell out his allies as he frantically tries to both stay alive and appear committed to his duty of upholding the law.

Demonstrating impressive boldness and a brilliant original score from Matt Johnson (of post-punk British group The The) this is a film of raw and unrestrained emotion. A thrilling cinematic plunge into the murky depths of London’s seedy underworld.

• Gerard and Matt Johnson will be in conversation with our cinema curator Mark Cosgrove on Sun 8 March, discussing their work, their influences and their collaboration on Hyena. As part of Filmic 2015 they are also curating our Sunday brunches for March, in what is the first installment of an explorative two-month long season celebrating the creative connections across film and music, by revisiting some of the great film scores that proved influential to them.

• The evening screening of Hyena on Tue 17 March is part of our Cinébites deal: get a cinema ticket, veggie or meat chilli, and a drink (wine/beer or soft drink) for only £15.

Hear from the team behind the film...

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