Selected by film and TV critic Philip Wakefield
Veteran critic Philip Wakefield selects his top five New Zealand feature films. Sifting through the cinema of unease and plucky genre flicks to separate the contenders was tough, but "in the end these five made the cut because they're quintessentially New Zealand, yet extraordinarily universal and were made with a finesse and a fervour that do the industry proud".
Whatever polish the first Māori-made feature lacks is more than made up for by a spiritual grandeur out of all proportion to its modest size. Set in a tiny East Cape township after the end of World War II, it is both a moving hymn to Māori self-determination and a warm, funny celebration of community life.
In Roger Donaldson’s second feature, Bruno Lawrence is exceptional as a small-town car nut who’s driven over the edge by wife Anna Jemison’s affair with cop Keith Aberdein. Aberdein also wrote the tough, tender screenplay with a corker black-comedy punchline that, in lesser hands, could have pushed Smash Palace off the rails.
Bruno Lawrence again shines, as the slicker-cloaked Clint Eastwood of the central North Island on the warpath for a Māori rebel (Anzac Wallace) who’s terrorising pākehā settlers. One US critic dubbed director Geoff Murphy’s follow-up to Goodbye Pork Pie “a Māori Wild Bunch” but it owes more to Soldier Blue revision, spaghetti westerns and larrikin exuberance.
As the ferociously in-your-face Jake the Muss, Temuera Morrison came of age as an actor while Rena Owen rarely falters as his abused wife, Beth. The trite and simplistic resolution aside, Warriors stands tall as both a powerful family tragedy and a myth-debunking indictment of a pavlova paradise that turned sour years ago.
In only his second feature in seven years, Scarfies director Robert Sarkies artfully and potently captures the anguish and terror of what it must have been like to be in Aramoana gunman David Gray’s sights on 13 November 1990. The characterisations are as vivid as the carnage while the performances are just as truthful.
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