“Utu” means in Maori revenge but also giving something back the opposite. That if someone helps you, you help him if he will need help someday. “Utu” is a beautiful but aggresive and sometime cruel settlement drama from the times when the first settlers in New Zealand arrived and the fight of them, called Pakeha against the indigenous people the Maori.
Director is Geoff Murphy and the movie is produced in 1983.
“In New Zealand in the 1860s the native Maori people fought the British colonials to keep the land guaranteed to them by treaty. The warrior Te Wheke fights for the British until betrayal leads him to seek utu (revenge). The settler Williamson in turn seeks revenge after Te Wheke attacks his homestead. Meanwhile Wiremu, an officer for the British, seems to think that resistance is futile. – Utu is the Maori word for “Retribution,” which sums up the chief motivating factor of this New Zealand-produced drama. Set in the 1870s, the film details the exigencies of British Colonial rule. A Maori scout Anzac Wallace stumbles across a native village that has been destroyed in a British raid. Since it is the scout’s own village, he deserts the British army, the better to seek “utu.” Leading a vigilante force consisting of his fellow Maoris, Wallace kills as many British settlers as he can get his hands on. The feverish conviction of Wallace’s crusade is in stark contrast to the attitudes of the British, who seem more concerned with material possessions than with human beings. Popular “down under” star Bruno Lawrence is cast as a vengeance-driven settler who makes it his personal mission in life to end Wallace’s reign of terror.”
