O'Reilly's Luck

This tale of small-town New Zealand in the early 1970s marked screen veteran Pat Robins' second outing as a director. Under pressure to keep an old promise to her mother, Sissy O’Reilly (Poina Te Hiko) bets everything on 11 frames of snooker. With a father she can’t trust (Bruno Lawrence) and a brother who seems interested only in the next beer, Sissy is convinced a local snooker tournament is the only way to secure the future of her whānau’s whenua. The half-hour film provides a nostalgic glimpse at Aotearoa past, and demonstrates Robins' belief that everyday life can be just as dramatic as any Hollywood drama. 

I think that real people are actually much more interesting than the general run of larger-than-life characters you often see on television. People who run big corporations and lead so-called glamorous 'life-styles' ... but if you dig beneath the surface, I think you'll find that plumbers or the people who work in pubs often have a lot of humour and tragedy in their lives, and to me that's a lot more fascinating.

– Writer/director Pat Robins, in an interview with The Listener, 19 August 1989, page 29

Key Cast & Crew

Bruno Lawrence

As: Jack (Dad)

Tama Poata

Writer, As: Snooker official

Poina Te Hiko

As: Sissy

Mitchell Manuel

As: Sissy's brother

Pat Robins

Producer, Director, Writer

Gaylene Preston

Writer