Anne Flannery's screen roles often saw her playing wife and mother - from partner to missionary Henry Williams in TV epic The Governor, to wheelchair-bound and mute in Heart of the Stag. The late actor and theatre director won acclaim when Vincent Ward's adaptation of A State of Siege offered her a rare chance to take centre frame. Flannery played a repressed ex-teacher whose demons unravel in an isolated house.
...(an) utterly dominating, even shattering performance by Anne Flannery, an actress New Zealand should be more than proud of.
– Michael Heath, in a 1978 review of A State of Siege.