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‘Chief of War' Review: Jason Momoa's Hawaiian Epic on Apple TV+

‘Chief of War' Review: Jason Momoa's Hawaiian Epic on Apple TV+

A common perception of Hawaii in its pre-Sandwich Island days is of an immaculate paradise despoiled by plunderers, and that perhaps Captain Cook rightly died in Kealakekua Bay. But savagery already was there according to 'Chief of War,' a nine-part series co-created by and starring Jason Momoa that is big, grand and grandiose.
The series is based largely on fact and set at a time when Hawaii was in a riptide of historical change. It is the late 1700s; Cook has come and gone; Kamehameha (terrific newcomer Kaina Makua) had not yet unified the islands. Each of the four main kingdoms—Hawa'i, O'ahu, Mau'i and Kaua'i, as they are treated in the show—was struggling for supremacy, or at least peace. What Mr. Momoa and co-writer/creator Thomas Pa'a Sibbett have structured is a drama that leans on the real and imagined histories common to cultures around the globe, which doesn't diminish the history of Hawaii as much as it shows that origin stories and creation myths can be shared by people with no obvious connections.
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