The year is 1870. In the lush forests and mist-covered farmlands of New Zealand, a war is raging between British government troops and the Maori peoples whose lands they want to confiscate. Te Wheke (Anzac Wallace) is a European-educated Maori scout for the British army. His eyes are opened to the absurdity of his position when his own supposedly "friendly" village is razed and his people slaughtered as the result of a tactical error on the part of the British. Te Wheke vows "utu" and proceeds to exact this ritual revenge on the British-any British. Throughout the action, mimicry and irony converge to reflect the Maori and British cultures back on one another. Director Geoff Murphy takes an almost ribald pleasure in the grotesqueness of the history he depicts, so that nothing-neither the hero, nor his victims, nor the sad plight of his people-is sacred or precious. Bruno Lawrence (The Quiet Earth, Smash Palace) and Merata Mita (our guest, September 22) co-star.