DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Geoff Murphy
PRODUCTION CO: Utu Productions, New Zealand Film Commission
SCREENPLAY: Geoff Murphy, Keith Aberdein
PHOTOGRAPHY: Graeme Cowley
EDITOR: Michael J. Horton, Ian John
MUSIC: John Charles
WITH: Anzac Wallace (Te Wheke), Bruno Lawrence (Williamson), Tim Eliott (Col. Elliot), Kelly Johnson (Lt. Scott), Wi Kuki Kaa (Wiremu), Tania Bristowe (Kura), Ilona Rodgers (Emily Williamson), Merata Mita (Matu), Faenza Reuben (Hersare), Tom Poata (Puni), Martyn Sanderson (Vicar), John Bach (Belcher), Dick Puanaki (Eru), Sean Duffy (Cpl. Jones), Ian Watkin (Doorman)

​FESTIVALS: Berlin

REVIEWS

“Utu is one of those New Zealand films that most people are aware of, but relatively few have seen. As one of the few movies that depicts the Maori land wars, many who have encountered it did so in the context of a high school history class. It’s also famous as a film that subverts easily-made presumptions about its protagonists and their trajectories.

All these elements combine to make it a prime candidate for big screen re-discovery, and watching this new restored edit overseen by director Geoff Murphy and DoP Graeme Cowley play out in a theatre provided an experience filled with the kind of cinematic grandeur that has all but disappeared from Kiwi cinema – if you don’t count a certain fantasy franchise.

Utu is also an often disarmingly intimate experience which moves forward by pushing all of its characters to increasingly difficult places. The lyrical style of the film has aged very well, and it now projects a Malick-ian appreciation for the awful duality of nature and violence. It even somehow finds an organic place for a classic ‘cheeky’ Geoff Murphy sex scene.

The complexity of the film’s politics feel more welcome than ever, coming at a time when audiences are embracing layered anti-heroes and less prescriptive storytelling.
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The late, great Bruno Lawrence is as wonderfully bedraggled as ever, but Anzac Wallace’s stoic, unflinching power dominates the film.”

– Dominic Corry, flicks.co.nz

“The cliche of New Zealand films is that they are dark, depressing, and dispiriting. While Utu’s subject matter is certainly dark, it’s anything but depressing – it wraps its historical fiction in a rollicking action-adventure package, with memorable characters and a surprising amount of laughs. Geoff Murphy – hot off New Zealand’s then biggest hit Goodbye Pork Pie, later to make post-apocalyptic classic The Quiet Earth before being wasted on the likes of Under Siege 2 and Lord of the Rings’ second unit – directs an energetic, muscular romp, infused with spaghetti Western action, ‘70s counterculture, and New Zealand history. Like many Westerns, Utu is also extremely violent. Characters are hanged, shot to death, decapitated, blown up, and impaled, the body count rising high over its 105 minutes. And get this: the Redux version is actually shorter than the original, thanks to snappier editing….

Just like other films have done in North America, Utu exploits the Western genre’s frontiersmanship, brutality, and nihilism to highlight the destruction of one culture by another. It’s New Zealand’s best film ever, at once culturally significant and broadly entertaining, melding American genre with New Zealand history to stunning effect.”

– Andrew Todd, Birth Movies Death

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Dunedin  
Wednesday, 23 February, 7:30pm

Hamilton  
Monday, 7 March, 8.00pm

New Plymouth  
Wednesday, 30 March, 6:00pm

Tauranga  
Thursday, 8 September, 6.30pm

Carterton 
Friday, 14 October, 7.00pm

Wellington  
Monday, 7 November, 6:15pm

Auckland  
Monday, 28 November, 6:15pm  






NZ FILM selection >>