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| I'm team Minuit (the one on the left). |
Beyond being credibly menacing and cool as all hell, they're all good actors with a loads of screen presence. Best of all, the dialogue in the movie is well written, and their characters are fallible and surprisingly well fleshed out. This becomes clear once the movie quiets down and 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 chores.
There's a great all-dialogue 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 the mercenaries 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 conflict erupts in the compound: the sky turns bone-white as a horde of evil spirits invade, and the movie takes a turn towards supernatural action/horror.
The monsters are decently rendered CGI menaces that collapse into a heap of rags and bones when killed (it turns out they're as vulnerable to bullets and knives to the face as your standard millitia member) . So the Hyenas (who, it's been revealed through the movie, aren't just honourable mercs but actual folk heroes) have to fight against the monstrous infestation and try to protect the other survivors.
The genre elements are low-budget but well-made, but my favourite 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 realises some of the shit he's been through, and Minuit joins in as well. There's a lot of empathy and true friendship on display here.
The script is great when it comes to its characters, but unfortunately it isn't as good at telling their story; The back half is full of incidents and revelations, but events flow into the next without enough connective tissue to make them feel organic. The split between action and horror is also a little uneven - both genres are a little at odds, leaving an otherwise strong ending feeling a little off.
The first few scenes of the movie had me a bit worried that it would stylistically ape the post-Tarantino knock-off films that plagued the late 90s and early 00s; You know, lots of flashy cuts, freeze frames and showy subtitles. Thankfully, things quickly calm down and the film goes for a more traditional, if desaturated look. There are a lot of lovely drone shots to introduce locations and some pretty striking imagery once the supernatural takes over the movie. Director Jean Luc Herbulot, cinematographer Gregory Corandi and the rest of the crew have made a very good-looking movie, one where the limited palette nevertheless still manages some vibrant splashes of colour.
So yeah. The movie has some issues, but they're all minor, and there's more than enough good stuff to make up for them; I would absolutely be down to see more adventures with the Hyenas, or Awa, or any combination of them.