Coked-Up Coppers and the Criminal Underworld: 'Hyena' Is a Glorious Moment for British Crime Films

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Since the age of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the British crime thriller has descended into a genre of tired cockney gangster tropes and over-the-top violence. Similarly, if you've tuned in to watch some London cop TV any time in the past few years, you've probably just caught Idris Elba shouting down the phone at a hacker-cum-serial killer who hides under people's beds.

Hyena is a welcome departure. A new British crime thriller about corruption in the Met, it possesses all the witching ambience of a nocturnal, neon-sheened Bangkok thriller, with a bubbling, electronic soundtrack to offset the Nil by Mouth-levels of London scuzz. The lead role comes in the shape of Michael (Peter Ferdinando), a grimy, sleep-deprived policeman who hates human trafficking but is super into drug trafficking.

I caught up with the film's writer and director, Gerard Johnson, mainly to find out whether he thinks the London Metropolitan Police are really made up of the blood-thirsty, coke-addled egomaniacs portrayed in the film.

VICE: Firstly, how did you do the research for this film? Investigating corruption in the police is a tricky thing to do.
Gerard Johnson: There was a certain amount of luck involved. There was this policeman, who's in witness protection now, who was open to talking to us. We also spent time with drug squads and vice squads and went out on raids, which involved running into houses with stab-proof vests while they were making arrests. We'd hang out and sit in cars and learn the terminology.

There was no stone left unturned, and it took three years to get it right. I did the same amount of research into people trafficking—spending time with charities that look after sheltered women, and meeting trafficked women.

So you'd say your film is a pretty realistic representation?
Absolutely. All you can do is as much research as possible. Especially for the rape scene; it needed to be as harrowing as possible. You almost want to say, "That's too much," because rape is too much, human trafficking is too much. If you're going to show that stuff, what's the point of not making the audience feel horrified? I'm no social worker, but I do want to be as realistic as I possibly can.

How did you make contact with the criminal element for research?
Like the police, it's a case of reaching out and meeting the right people… or the wrong people. I'm pretty adept at going into sleazy, horrible worlds. My first film was about a serial killer, so I'm always picking subjects like that. I find it interesting to scratch beneath the surface of environments that we know and find whole worlds that are hidden to us because we don't want to open our eyes to them.

I noticed there weren't many strong female characters. Why is that?
The police force is still very white male-orientated. I wanted to show that the job and that world is dominated by unpleasant men. People get confused and think that, because you make the film, you must share those views, but it's actually the opposite. I'm interested in people who aren't similar to me.

Stephen Graham is great in the film. Did you write his character with him in mind?
Yeah, I totally wrote it for him. I wanted a character who was really unpleasant, with a face that you just don't trust and that has the propensity to terrify you. Stephen can play nice characters but always looks as if he could turn. It was odd doing workshops with him and knowing him from This Is England, as I was acting a lot of parts myself and it threw me a little bit when he was screaming in my face. It was scary to be in the room with that.

What about Peter Ferdinando? He's pretty realistic as a brooding, coke-addled policeman.
I first pitched this idea to Peter years ago, long before we went into pre-production. He grew his hair for a number of years for Hyena and then he put two-and-a-half stone on. It's all to do with how much you put into it.

Were there any moments of improv in the film?
The party scenes are improvised, because you just want [the actors] to let go. We left those scenes until the end of the day so they could have a few cans of Guinness. Obviously you have to draw the line if you're doing drugs because, if you start doing that, you're not going to be able to perform take after take after take. You'd totally lose concentration.

There's a kind of electric blue, 1980s Korean action movie aesthetic to the film. Was that—the Korean action movie look—a conscious influence?
I don't mind that comparison as I think it's right, but it's not something that really affected my palette. London is used really badly on TV—images of the Gherkin, or Shoreditch because there's some graffiti on a wall. I wanted to make London a character in itself, where it's always night and people are always out on the street.

A lot of French films of the 1960s—as well as American films from the 1970s—have influenced Hyena, and I suppose the Korean directors are influenced by directors like Jean-Pierre Melville, so we're all channelling from the same areas. But I wanted to make it look European as opposed to a London gangster film.

There are some lone moments of black comedy in the film. Would you say you've got quite a dark sense of humor?
Yeah. It's important to juxtapose the horrors with a little bit of light relief. I think sometimes a bit of black humor in the darkest times is good. You couldn't really be humorous when it comes to things like trafficking, though. It's got to be in the right places.

Why did you call the film Hyena?
A Hyena is an amazing animal —the second most effective predator in the animal kingdom—and they're incredibly powerful. But they're strongest when they're in a pack. When they're on their own, a Hyena won't take on a lion; but 20 of them would kill one. Michael, the main character, is very powerful when everything's going his way, but as soon as anything gets out of hand he's crying like a baby.

Hyena is out in UK cinemas this Friday, March 6.

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