Crooked Earth

Crooked Earth attempts to marry the topical and the controversial with the kind of scope and spectacle that we don’t see enough of in our national cinema

Crooked Earth, New Zealand, 2000

Director: Sam Pillsbury
Production co: Communicado/Crooked Earth Productions
Producer: Robin Scholes
Executive producers: Peter Beilby, Henry Dorlet, Ernst Goldschmidt
Script: Karin Altmann, Michael Brindley, Greg McGee, Waihoroi Shortland, Gavin Strawhan
Photography: David Gribble
Editor: Chris Plummer
Casting: Don Selwyn
Production design: Kai Hawkins
Original music: James Hall

With: Temuera Morrison (Will Bastion), Jaime Passier-Armstrong (Ripeka Bastion), Lawrence Makoare (Kahu Bastion), Quinton Hita (Api), Nancy Brunning (Marama), Sydney Jackson (Pettigrew), George Henare (Tipene), Calvin Tuteao (Sergeant Ropiha)

35mm, 105 minutes, R13—Contains violence, drug use and offensive language

Watch the trailer for Crooked Earth (2.8MB; 2.10 minutes)

Crooked Earth is an explosive, action-packed saga in which two brothers battle over the future of their people. It’s a modern-day wild frontier story of rebellion, passion and survival of the toughest. Will Bastion, a strong, thoughtful man, returns from 20 years service in the New Zealand Army to Raukura, his hometown, to face the biggest challenge of his life. His father has died, leaving a sacred greenstone patu, the symbol of leadership, to him. He doesn’t want it, believing it represents the violence he has turned his back on. But he realises he must confront his brother, the charismatic firebrand, Kahu, who has turned the village into a lawless, dope-growing wasteland. Kahu takes the greenstone patu, literally, using its force to club the world into submission. It’s brother against brother in a flaming inferno of loyalty, betrayal, love and honour.

“Crooked Earth centres on the Maori people’s hereditary claims to its land and traditions, as enacted in a bitter showdown that pits brother against brother. Directed by American-born, New Zealand-raised Sam Pillsbury with an eye toward the conventions of the Western genre, starring the electric Temuera Morrison (Once Were Warriors), the film is a handsomely mounted and compelling family saga… No Western would be complete without referencing the relationship between the hero, the landscape and mythology that binds them; Crooked Eaarth has those elements in spades. In place of the sprawling plains of the American Southwest, the film offers the craggy peaks of Raukura, New Zealand, home to the tribe Ngati Kaipuku. As the script (credited to five writers) makes clear, heroic tradition and Maori mythology are inextricably linked. After 20 years as an army office, Captain Will Bastion (Morrison) is forced to resign. Returning home to bury his father, a tribal chief, Will finds his rebellious younger brother Kahu (Lawrence Makoare) anxious to inherit the mantle of tribal leader. Charging into the funeral procession astride a white stallion, Kahu means to make his presence known. Whereas Kahu is a radical separatist who openly defies the government’s laws, Will feels estranged from tribal traditions and is reluctant to assume the leadership duties incumbent on the elder son. At issue is the future of the tribe’s land. Having had to fend off the incursions and manipulations of white legislators for years, the tribesmen insist their land remain within the Maori family, despite repeated governmental offers to purchase it, albeit at an insultingly low price. Though Will is willing to negotiate with the government, Kahu’s much more aggressive leadership prevails, forcing violent, sometimes fatal confrontations with his dissenters… Pillsbury manages a remarkable balancing act of objectivity: He neither glorifies Maori rituals as exotic, nor does he demean them. As a result, the film feels authentic and true to its origins. David Gribble’s photography like-wise achieves a double-edged mission, rendering the countryside lush and inviting while showing the harsh and dangerous aspects of it as well.” — Lael Loewenstein, Variety, 3/12/01

“A brave bid to tackle provocative political issues within the context of a stirring shoot-‘em-up. The setting is a small North Island town where the death of an iwi elder sparks a feud between his sons: one a reckless Maori radical who deals in drugs to fund his violent reformist zeal, the other an enigmatic ex-army vet not yet ready to inherit his father’s legacy. The tangle of themes proves too unwieldy and is compromised by a somersault climax and racist characterisations. But at least Crooked Earth attempts to marry the topical and the controversial with the kind of scope and spectacle that we don’t see enough of in our national cinema.” — Philip Wakefield, The Dominion Post TV Week, 8/4/03

Crooked Earth screened on 14 November 2004 as part of a season selected by film maker Larry Parr.