Hyena Road (2016)

Instant Favorite.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Blistering performances.

Note: I have seen this movie for "Xbox's Free Movie Weekend" that took place on the weekend of the August 5th. So I did not pay for this movie nor I did not pay to see this movie.The movie is "R" of course; there is gore, chopped off heads, body parts flying off, etc. It's your typical Army movie gore that makes you say, "Dammmmnnn." Hyena Road doesn't really have that many intense moments like with most Army related movies nowadays, you get a few, one or two major fights and that's about it. The acting is average, the plot was decent, the twist (can be expected) and the dialogue between characters could have been better. In some parts of the movie it was/it can be predictable, but I just wished it ended differently (but you can't change "inspired by true events" history).On the Xbox app (where I watched it), there aren't any subtitles for when the people are talking. This more or less takes you out of the movie moment and confuses you at times when these characters talk. Maybe there are subtitles on different movie outlets, but I didn't see any on the Xbox app.Hyena Road is nothing horrible, but it's an average war movie that you "don't need to see," but if you do see it don't expect too much.

I know their were Canadians who did combat operations in Afghanistan, but unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to work with them. I absolutely know they would hate this movie though. They way the Soldiers were portrayed in such a cliché way, to the horrible one dimensional representations of the Afghans. All the great user reviews from the Canadians here, do yourselves a favor and go talk to one of your veterans...and not someone who worked in the TOC or someone who claims they are a war hero, go talk to an average grunt who went out on patrol everyday and saw action a handful of times because this is the fantasy type crap that creates s**t ideas of what war is like.

I thought this was pretty damn good, but then I like war films where the protagonists aren't always flawless and righteous no matter what they do -- morally ambiguous is what I'm going for here.. Mostly the story revolves around the military aspect of building the title road, from the snipers and soldiers on the ground laying protection and scouting, to command relaying information and shaking hands, to intelligence playing chess with what information they have. From my understanding at least some of the footage was taken on a trip to Afghanistan, and it seems most of the cinematography was adjusted to match that, which while irritating at times did add to the overall effect. On the other hand, while I'm sure such things happen on base, the romance subplot was unnecessary as it added nothing but some melodrama to the plot. The narration, while somewhat informative, really did feel out of place, as I don't care about Alexander the Great's story; if they wanted it there for background than it would have been better as a story in dialog. Those aspects aside, I found this much more palatable than 'American Sniper', a film which gets worse the more I think about it.Source: http://www.megashare-viooz.net/hyena-road-2015.html

This is by far the smartest war movie ever. You actually learn a lot about the afghan conflict, and shows just how complicated things can get there. The acting is great, the story superb, and even if you are not Canadian you end up truly feeling sorry for their losses. It shows Hollywood that yes it is possible to make a patriotic movie which does end up being cheesy, misleading, or plan stupid.I cannot recommend enough this flick if you like smart movies. You'll learn from this movie more about that conflict that watching years of CNN.