There's a saying in Hawaii "Don't confuse my Aloha for weakness."
Basically it's a warning to foreigners who interpret island politeness and generosity for a license to push locals around and take whatever they want. What incompetent elites and ignorant malahini fail to understand is that Law of the Splintered Paddle is an agreement to keep savagery under check so that we don't miss a harvest and accidentally starve to death because we were all too busy murdering each other. This unspoken ethos is the reason TikTok influencers don't prank here and Antifa attempts to raise a ruckus during the Summer of Love fell flat, and it's best summed up by Robert E. Howard in his his Conan the Barbarian novels:
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
This tragic miscommunication literally started from the first contact with the West. When Captain Cook sailed up the the Big Island, the natives mistook him for the god Lono and gave him a hero's welcome. In return he took advantage, then when the locals began to have doubts he started taking hostages. The Hawaiians protested at this break in decorum and one of Cook's sailors fired a shot at a Kanaka wearing traditional armor. The musket ball bounced off, and soon after the Captain's hindquarters were deboned and delivered back to his ship wrapped in a ti leaf.
In present day Hawaii there is a concerted attempt to rewrite this violent history of offense and reprisal in order to castrate the culture and turn the islands into a sterilized Disney attraction. We are taught to believe that Aloha means never questioning the government and being obedient to our leaders. In essence they are taking the most powerful word in the culture that protects us from each other and weaponizing it as a means of browbeating into submission anyone who speaks up about the rapidly declining condition of our exploited and suffering population. The most egregious example is the recent Hawaii Supreme Court using "the spirit of Aloha" as a justification for the state to override federal law and violate the 2nd amendment rights if the citizens. As the popular meme states: any government that cannot trust it’s citizens with arms is clearly not worthy of our trust.
At times living here feels like being trapped in Progressive doom loop where our leaders copy the worst mistakes of California and faithful sheep line up behind the Next Thing, so it was delightful surprise to watch a locally produced Western about a Hawaiian folk hero from Kauai who literally shot the sheriff then ran to the hills with his family and Lee Enfield rifle, successfully resisting a tyrannical government that attempted to break his sacred bond of marriage.
First off I want to commend the film makers of The Wind and The Reckoning for an excellent technical job. The cinematography, sound mix, and production design are all a testament to the level of talent we have here in the islands who have polished their craft on countless Hollywood productions. Period pieces are notoriously difficult especially with a limited budget, and the choices they made are a wonderful example of best-use of resources.
The action sequences were particularly enjoyable, gritty but not overly gory. I felt the approrpriate amount of tension wondering how a certain turn of events would go and was often suprised by the result. The actors mostly excelled in their non-dialogue performances conveying the necessary intensity to keep me emotionally invested, and in fact it was these moments that truly carried the film. Also kudos to the writers for handling difficult subject matter without completely giving into the nauseating trend of attempting to appeal to Modern Audiences. I'm not sure how this film slipped through the cracks at a time like this when every attempt is being made to divide people up and turn them against each other. More on that later.
It was also love the fact that so much of the dialogue is in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. I just began my study in Hawaiian language and it was a real treat to catch some of the phrases without looking at subtitles. I really hope more movies do this in the future, as it is a wonderful tool for those of us who didn’t have the benefit of going to immersion schools and are trying to catch up later in life. I’ll be re-watching it several times for that reason alone.
Now for some gripes.
This is difficult for me because I know a quite a few of the people who worked on the production and wish them all the success in the world, but if we're ever going to catch up with New Zealand in terms of quality locally produced Polynesian cinema there are some bad habits that need to be addressed.
The movie is pretty far from being historically accurate and takes a lot of liberties with the source material that didn't really need to get juiced up for an emotional payoff. The events of the Leper War on Kauai were caused by a series of tragic mistakes of a chaotic new government that was officially fighting a foreign disease but in reality more interested in flexing on the local population. This is literally the perfect playground for cult classic moral ambiguity, and plenty of opportunities were lost by trying to squeeze it into the good vs evil mold.
(SPOILERS AHEAD. If you haven’t seen it already I recommend doing so first.)
Jason Scott Lee is an amazing human being, but the problem with this role is that he's playing a victim instead of a renegade. When they are inspecting his naked wife for leprosy in front of him he makes the pain face which completely broke down my suspension of disbelief. Put a Polynesian in that situation and 9 times out of 10 you'll get an eye-popping murder face like Temuera Morrison in Once Were Warriors. Maybe the idea was to give him more of a relatable motivation for shooting people later on, but isn't someone attacking your family and community enough? I guess people now are much softer than we used to be and therefore need over the top justification for violence, or at least the director had doubts about his audience and decided to play it safe.
Also the scene near the end where he gives his famous "I defy you with my life" Oscar worthy scream made me glad I didn't see this in the theater, becasue as a frustrated firearms owner I was shouting "Use your @#$% sights!" as he was having a gun fight across a canyon and shooting from the hip. Maybe the point was that he was trying to sacrifice himself so they would leave his family alone but they didn't make that clear. Also the whole sacrifice thing doesn't make sense. How is his suicide by cop supposed to protect his still-on-the-run family from possible rape and murder? I was getting worked up for the emotional payoff only to have the door slammed in my face. Fortunately his wife Piilani (Lindsay Watson) saved the scene from total disappointment, and even though it was another Mary Sue girl power moment it provide some much needed relief when she finally drops the antagonist using a cinematic sniper stance.
Bad guys are Bad
On the plus side they seemed to try to apply the lessons from the Princess Kaiulani film where the bad white dudes were so one-dimensional that it came off at times like anti-white propaganda. One of the most inspiring lines was when the protagonist Koolau stops his son from a haole-hating tirade by warning him that he will become the thing that he hates the most. We have a huge problem with racism in this state and it's a relief that the writers took the time to not only take the fuse out of that bomb, but turn it into a teaching moment that brings the audience together. When the soldiers in the end turn around and walk away they seem to be showing disgust with the whole situation, displaying their humanity instead of behaving like Hannah Barbera's Really Rottens.
That said there were still some problems, most notably the main villain. The best bad guys always have some sort of well defined goal that frightens us because on some level we identify with them. Even Lee Van Cleif's Angel Eyes lives by a code and Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurth explores his own twisted philosopy. As much talent as Henry Ian Cusick brought to the role it was difficult for him to overcome the script boxing him in a corner as drunken Snidley Whiplash. Evil purely for the sake of evil is extremely rare, which is why we are so fascinated by serial killers. Even Anthony Faucci must think he's balancing the scales on some level. Unfortunately Cusick's McCabe leaned toward no-mission and all-creep, a trope that Hawaii productions still struggle with. Personally I found the first sherriff to be a far more terrifying character...a local official reluctantly carrying out a public health mandate even though it goes against his conscience.
Legacy of Covid
Speaking of recent diseases of unknown origin, the film was shot on a 50 acre location on the Big Island during late 2020 where all the cast and crew were isolated from the general population, PCR testing, and putting their masks back on in between takes. Someone at some point must have contemplated the absuridty of reliving a historical epoch where a health scare was used as cover to enforce martial law during a coupt de tat. McCabe's signature line of "come get your medicine" before he shoots people in the head was so oddly prophetic that it's down right creepy. It's almost like there was a message trying to get out that the film makers accidentally expressed. If there was some intentionality about it then I cannot send enough gratitude their way for displaying such bravery during a time of extreme censorship and mass formation psychosis.
Summary
Despite it's flaws I highly recommend this movie. This clearly represents a turning point in Hawaiian cinema which up until now has far too often unwittingly appealed to the leftist values of cultural deconstructionism and socialist internal colonization. Finally we have a template for projects that use historical examples to bring us together and encourage understanding rather than opening up old wounds in order to score cheap emotional points and thereby abandon any possibility of commercial success or long-term relevance. As islands our land is defined by extreme limitation and therefore it is essential for our survival to find some common ground, especially when the government starts to forget who they work for.
If you are interested in seeing this film you can find the streaming links HERE.
Thanks for your patience. The issues with Substack have mostly been resolved and this is the correct version of the article.