Utu

Utu must rate as the most powerful, expert and audience-appealing film yet to be wholly conceived and executed in this country...

Utu, New Zealand, 1983

Director: Geoff Murphy
Screenplay: Geoff Murphy, Keith Aberdein
Executive producers: Don Blakeney, Kerry Robins, David Carson-Parker
Director of photography: Graeme Cowley
Camera operator: Paul Leach
Assistant director: Lee Tamahori
Editor: Mike Horton
Sound: Graham Morris
Sound mixing: Don Reynolds, Brian Shennan
Music: John Charles
Performed by: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Production manager: Pat Murphy

With: Anzac Wallace (Te Wheke), Bruno Lawrence (Williamson), Wi Kuki Kaa (Wiremu), Kelly Johnson (Lieutenant Scott), Tania Bristowe (Kura), Ilona Rodgers (Emily Williamson), Merata Mita (Matu), Tim Elliot (Col. Elliot), Tama Poata (Puni)

35mm, colour, 116 minutes, PG—Contains Violence

New Zealand in the 1870s: a Maori village is massacred by colonial troops. The outrage is discovered by Te Wheke, a warrior who has been scouting for the soldiers. It's a military blunder, the village was 'friendly' and the dead were Te Wheke's own people. He turns on his employers, takes up his warrior chieftain past and seeks utu. With a growing band of rebels he engages in guerilla warfare against the white man. He attacks a farmhouse where the farmer's wife is killed. Farmer Williamson survives with a compulsion to avenge his wife's death, and sets out into the spectacular high country in search of Te Wheke. At the same time, the military increases its efforts to find and destroy him.

“Utu is undoubtedly the work of a filmmaker who cares passionately, both about the process of filmmaking and about the subject being treated. Bruno Lawrence, the only really top-class film actor to emerge from the recent crop of New Zealand films (he was the husband in Smash Palace and the only bright spot in the otherwise dire Search for the Yankee Zephyr), as an extraordinary and extremely disconcerting presence as Williamson, while Anzac Wallace, a former trades union activist making his acting début, is magnificent as Te Wheke, whether leafing in fascination through Macbeth, rolling his tongue before beheading the parson, or singing his final waiata before blowing his own head off. Even homogenised, the anger and energy of Utu, the scope of the big action scenes and the consistent excellence of Graeme Cowley’s cinematography, make the film, for all its occasional lapses and uncertainties of tone, one of great interest and not a little power.” — Nick Roddick, Monthly Film Bulletin, vol.52, February 1985

“The rumbling, underground buzz presaging Geoff Murphy’s Utu, the first NZ feature in the blockbuster category is just about right. Set during the 19th century times of savage encounter between European and Maori, the behind-celluloid word was the picture would be a breakthrough for the home film industry in successfully meshing theme and story of epic scale... In a NZ western of the North American Indian-white settler school, Murphy has fashioned a fast-moving visual tale of archetypal passion and action that should appeal well beyond these shores. Central figure is rebel leader Te Wheke during the wars between European settlers and the native Maoris in New Zealand of the late 19th century... With a main theme of ‘those who live by the sword, die by the sword’ – no matter what race, no matter what circumstances – Murphy has produced powerful images and strong performances... Action sequences, special effects, and visual exploitation of a rugged, high country location in central New Zealand are superb… Utu must rate as the most powerful, expert and audience-appealing film yet to be wholly conceived and executed in this country...” — Mike Nicolaidi, Variety, 9 February 1983

Screenings: Utu screened on 6 June 2004 in film maker and actor Whetu Fala's selection; on 11 May 2005 in a programme selected by editor Annie Collins; on 6 July 2005 in a season honouring actor Bruno Lawrence; and on 31 October 2007 as part of the season "Sleepers Awake" celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sleeping Dogs and the 1980s revival in NZ film making.