Utu

One of the best films yet to emerge from the budding New Zealand cinema, UTU (Maori for "retribution") deals with the British colonial presence on the islands in the 1870s. Te Wheke (Anzac Wallace) is a Maori in the service of the British army as a scout and guide. One day, while going about his scouting duties, he comes across a village that the British have wiped out in a massacre. It is Wheke's own village, and he then deserts the British to seek revenge against them. With a small group of similarly angry renegades, he launches a campaign of terror and murder against the British. When they attack an isolated farm, murdering the woman of the house and burning it ...