UTU (Redux)
New Zealand / 1983 / 109 min / DCP / Adventure

Director : Geoff Murphy

Script : Keith Aberdein, Geoff Murphy  
Cinematography : Graeme Cowley
Editing : Michael Horton, Ian John
Music : John Charles
Production : Don Blakeney, Geoff Murphy
Distribution : La Rabia

Cast : Anzac Wallace, Bruno Lawrence, Tim Elliott, Kelly Johnson, John Bach

It's the 1870s, and charismatic Māori leader Te Wheke is fed up by brutal land grabs. He takes up arms and leads a bloody rebellion against the colonial NZ Government. In the process he provokes everyone affected by his actions — threatened frontiersmen, disgruntled natives, lusty wahine, bible-bashing priests, and kupapa amongst them — to consider the nature and meaning of ‘utu’ (retribution). He attacks a farmhouse, where the farmer's wife is killed. The farmer sets out to get revenge for her death. Two men...each seeking vengeance.

Geoff Murphy

He was born in 1938. He is a New Zealand producer, director and screenwriter best known for his work during the renaissance of New Zealand cinema that began in the last half of the 1970s. His second feature Goodbye Pork Pie (1981) was the first New Zealand film to win major commercial success on its own soil. He also directed in New Zealand Utu (1983), The Quiet Earth (1985, Never Say Die (1988). Murphy directed several Hollywood features during the 1990s including Young Guns II, Freejack, Fortress 2, before returning to New Zealand as second-unit director on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. He directed in 2004 Spooked.