Crooked Earth

Buy yourself a new mountain. We're taking ours back.

– Kahu Bastion (Lawrence Makoare)

(Director Sam) Pillsbury manages a remarkable balancing act of objectivity: He neither glorifies Māori rituals as exotic, nor does he demean them. As a result, the film feels authentic and true to its origins.

– Reviewer Lael Lowenstein in Variety, 3 December 2001

The world is full of assholes who think they're born to rule just because they're next in line.

– Will (Temuera Morrison)

You stand in your pulpit preaching peace, love and bloody harmony, while the white oppressors cut the ground from under our feet.

– Kahu (Lawrence Makoare) to Tipene (George Henare)

It's an entertaining adventure film with a lot of ambition ... There are emotional hakas, stand-offs of the Māori persuasion and a stunt that is contrived but spectacular ... Director Sam Pillsbury is to be applauded for his enthusiasm, but Crooked Earth was uneven territory.

– Charles Fairbairn, in Capital Times, 29 August 2001, page 6