Saloum

 Bangui's Hyenas are a trio of mercenaries operating throughout northern Africa. As the movie starts they're extracting a cartel dealer from a Guinean sting operation/massacre, but the plane they use to escape has been sabotaged. Before they run out of fuel they decide to set down in the Saloum region of Senegal, as one of them is familiar with the area.

 The mercenaries are a great bunch of characters: There's Chaka (Yann Gael), the leader of the outfit, young but always serious. Rafa (Roger Sallah) sports a mohawk and is the hot headed, impulsive one. and last but definitely not least is Minuit (Mentor ba) - the old hand, a white-haired grizzled shaman motherfucker who blows sleeping dust into people's faces. 

I'm team Minuit (the one on the left).

 Beyond looking badass and cool as all hell, they're all good actors with a loads of screen presence. Best of all, the dialog in the movie is really well written, with lots of room for their characters to be fleshed out. This becomes clear as the trio plus Felix the (mexican?) drug pusher (Renaud Farah) seek refuge on a weird compound/hostel ruled over by a charismatic old man who exchanges lodging for finishing chores.

 There's a great all-dialog scene where the new arrivals meet the other guests in the compound over dinner and a few complications are introduced. First, one of the guests, a deaf-mute woman named Awa (Evelyne Ily Juhen) recognizes them and demands they take her with them (with sign language, while the rest of the table remains clueless.) Then the chief of the local police arrives, and takes an interest in Felix.

 Soon it's revealed that Chaka had some ulterior motives for coming to this compound. As a result the old man that runs the place dies, all hell breaks loose, and the movie takes a turn towards supernatural horror.

 You see, the old man was dealing with a tribe of  deadly spirits, and with his death they break loose, turn the sky bone-white, and start hunting everyone down.

 The monsters are cool - an amorphous blob of locust-like specks of darkness, vaguely looking like horned humanoids. When they're killed (it turns out they're as vulnerable to bullets and knives to the face as your standard mook) they collapse into a heap of rags and bones. So the Hyenas (who, it's been revealed through the movie, aren't just honorable mercs but actual folk heroes) have to fight against the spirit infestation and try to protect the other survivors.

 We finally get some (low budget but well-made) action where the Hyenas face off against the spirits as they go look for fuel and  resin to repair their plane. But my favorite scenes all have to do with Chaka, Rafa and Minuit; in the best one Rafa stops everything to show his support for Chaka once he realizes the traumatic events he's been through, and Minuit joins in as well. There's a lot of empathy and true affection on display here, demonstrated to an extent that you wouldn't expect on a Hollywood movie.
 

 Once the surprise twists are out of the way, I was reminded more than anything else of From Dusk Till Dawn - not just the tonal shift, but the tone of the individual halves are an undeniable influence.
 The script is great when it comes to dialog, but unfortunately it isn't as good when it comes to telling its story. The back half is full of incidents and revelations, but things just run into each other without enough connective tissue to make it feel organic all the way to a finale that doesn't feel particularly satisfying given that it veers away from the action focus.

 The first few scenes had me a bit worried that the style would fall into that particular '90s thing - Tarantino by way of Guy Ritchie and all the other less talented hacks that did that; you know, lots of flashy cuts, freeze frames and subtitles, but thankfully it quickly calms down and goes for a more traditional look. There are a lot of lovely drone shots to introduce locations and some pretty striking imagery once the supernatural invades the movie.

 So yeah. It's got some issues but this is a good one and I'm glad I watched it; I would absolutely be down to see more adventures with the Hyenas, or Awa, or any combination of them.