Crooked Earth

Film (Trailer and Excerpts) – 2001

R13

Restricted

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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

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)