Actor Ray Winstone was promoting Tracker in the United Kingdom this week. He praised the beauty of the film's locations, which included Moke Lake, the Rees Valley, Nevis Valley, Kawarau River, Queenstown Hill and Glenorchy.
"It's my idea of what heaven would be," Winstone told the Sun newspaper. "It's a stunning place."
Londoner Winstone learned a South African accent to play Arjan, a farmer turned Boer War guerrilla survivor and master tracker. Arjan lands in colonial New Zealand and is promised a bounty to capture Kereama (Temuera Morrison), a Maori seafarer accused of killing a soldier.
What should be a simple job for Arjan turns into a dangerous game of cat and mouse as Kereama repeatedly escapes and is recaptured, all the while insisting on his innocence.
As each gains and loses the upper hand, they gradually get to know and respect each other.
British director Ian Sharp said Tracker was originally supposed to be set around Auckland, "but when I read the script, I had this idea for an anamorphic big western and so I was told that the South Island was the place to be.
"And as soon as I landed in Queenstown, I thought this is it. Because with any kind of epic, you need an epic canvas to paint on and, although for most of the film it's a two-hander, the themes it explores are massive, so the landscape reflects that."
Critic Anthony Quinn, of the Independent, described Tracker as a "classic western", which featured the "mesmerising spectacle of New Zealand's rivers and valleys" and "two dramatic killer twists".
• Tracker, Reading Cinemas, Queenstown Mall, 1.15pm, 3.45pm, 8.30pm from May 9 to May 12, and possibly the following week, depending on patronage.
