Neil Maskell

Hyena, the second feature from London-born director Gerard Johnson, opens with a slow motion raid on a neon-blue nightclub. The four men who carry it out are inebriated – a mixture of drink and drugs – and meet wordlessly en route in a small, plain car. When they park in an alleyway and pull on police gear, your first instinct is that they’re faking it, putting on masks. But it transpires that they really are policeman, just the kind that employ violence indiscriminately and abuse their authority to take a cut from local gangs.

Rather surprisingly given its small budget and lack of household, or in some cases even recognizable names, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List made quite a critical splash when it was released two years ago. The follow up to his rather porous debut Down Terrace, the story of two hitmen, three targets and an escalation from moody …

Pusher Written by Matthew Read Directed by Luis Prieto UK, 2012 1996’s Pusher launched the career of director Nicolas Winding Refn, and was followed by two sequels in the early 2000s. With some recurring characters but differing leads in each of the trilogy’s films, the first in the series concerned a man growing increasingly desperate, …

Pusher Written by Matthew Read Directed by Luis Prieto UK, 2012 1996’s Pusher launched the career of director Nicolas Winding Refn, and was followed by two sequels in the early 2000s. With some recurring characters but differing leads in each of the trilogy’s films, the first in the series concerned a man growing increasingly desperate, …

Wild Bill Written by Dexter Fletcher and Danny King Directed by Dexter Fletcher UK, 2011 Two recurring tropes for many directorial debuts from established actors are to, firstly, work within the constraints of a genre you may already be associated with, and, secondly, enlist a few of your famous thespian friends to work for you. …