Hyena Road
Hyena Road character is unusual for war movies, as these examples show
(out of 4) Starring Paul Gross, Rossif Sutherland, Christine Horne and Neamat Arghandabi. Written and directed by Paul Gross. At GTA theatres. 120 minutes.
Paul Gross’s Hyena Road character Pete Mitchell is a man of situational ethics, an intelligence officer who believes in adjusting the rules to suit the circumstance.
He’s a rarity amongst Canadian characters in war movies — Dudley Do-Right types who traditionally have been idealistic strivers in morally justifiable crusades, as per these examples:
Afghan Luke (Mike Clattenburg, 2011) Nick Stahl is the title idealist Luke Benning, a plucky Canuck journalist bent on exposing alleged Afghan War atrocities by Canadian soldiers, even if it kills him. More Jarhead than Apocalypse Now in its peacenik sentiments, in that muddled intentions are to blame more than badness, but the futility of war is powerfully expressed.
Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton, 1969) Toronto’s Christopher Plummer plays a Canadian fighter pilot, Squadron Leader Colin Harvey, in this widescreen recreation of one of the signal air battles of the Second World War. Harvey righteously fights the good fight, although his wife (Susannah York) wishes he’d show her more affection.
Plummer asked that his character’s Royal Air Force uniform display “Canada” shoulder flashes.
Passchendaele (Paul Gross, 2008) Gross’s second feature as writer/ director/actor has him as Sgt. Michael Dunne, a wounded Calgary warrior conflicted by using violence to achieve peace.
Unabashedly romantic (Caroline Dhavernas plays Dunne’s sweetheart) while also unyielding in its horrific images of an epochal First World War battle, Passchendaele salutes duty, valour and integrity.
Tobruk (Arthur Hiller, 1967) Rock Hudson is Canadian PoW Major Donald Craig, an ace map maker during the Second World War, who is freed by a special British commando unit of German Jews.
He’s tasked with leading an attack across 1,287 kilometres of Nazi-infested desert against a major fuel depot in Tobruk, Libya, the one used by Erwin “Desert Fox” Rommel’s brutal Afrika Korps.
Directed by Edmonton-born Arthur Hiller.