Mafu Kopu’s first sales territory is a neighborhood of fellow Tongans. He makes no sales of Forget, the cleaning product he has been hired to pitch. His failure says something about the job before the film reveals its criminal possibilities. The people at those doors share his background; he cannot easily become a stranger with a polished script. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi plays Mafu’s discomfort without making him seem foolish. He needs the work, and sending money to his family in Tonga gives him a reason to try again.
Then Marco Cass shows him how to sell. Simon Rex arrives with the assurance Mafu lacks and the attention that assurance attracts. Marco talks as though he can make a customer feel chosen, even when he is steering the conversation toward a purchase.
His technique eventually has a name, “short-term hypnosis”: he directs a person’s attention elsewhere while guiding the sale. Alex Liu lets us enjoy the difference in skill between the two men before making its implications difficult to ignore. Marco can teach Mafu to sound confident, but the sales depend on taking away someone else’s ability to choose freely.
That progression gives God Bless You, Mr. Kopu its energy. Liu, who wrote and directed the film, sets it in 1993 New Zealand, where Mafu’s lack of work makes Marco’s success look like an answer to an immediate problem. Their visits have the appealing rhythm of a crime partnership: a plan, an encounter at the door, then the small rush of seeing it pay off.
Mafu knows enough to call Marco’s method stealing, yet their first outing together earns him $200. The film gives that decision a sum he can use, rather than asking us to accept a vague temptation. Forget itself turns out to be little more than water and ethanol. Marco’s real product is his ability to convince people that he has what they need.
Rex makes that ability entertaining to watch. His Marco talks with the easy certainty of a man who expects others to follow along, and his composure becomes less attractive when it begins to fail him. Schuster-Koloamatangi gives Mafu a different sort of control. As the money comes in, he grows smoother in Marco’s company, but his unease does not vanish at the same speed. That slight mismatch keeps Mafu’s change legible. He is learning the performance before he has settled what it means to give it.
The film’s comedy also changes once Mafu and Marco begin targeting people who share Mafu’s Polynesian background. A member of his community challenges him over working with the American salesman. By then, the early failure in the Tongan neighborhood has acquired a sharper meaning.
Mafu struggled to sell to people who recognized him; with Marco, he can profit from their trust while pretending the transaction is impersonal. Liu sometimes states this conflict plainly, but the repeated sales give it force that dialogue alone could not supply. Each successful visit makes it harder for Mafu to treat his participation as a temporary compromise.
Liu pushes that unease beyond the doorsteps. Mafu begins losing track of time, and dream sequences grow more violent as he becomes involved in Marco’s scheme. Those interruptions alter the feeling of the brisk sales scenes: the film can move quickly from one apparent success to the next, while Mafu has a less secure grasp of what has happened between them. I like how that change allows the crime comedy to retain its momentum even as the experience of watching it becomes less comfortable. The shift grows out of Mafu’s situation rather than arriving as an abrupt change of genre.
A late revelation invites us to reconsider much of what came before. Liu has prepared enough for the turn to feel connected to the story, and its arrival is exciting. The cost is that a reframe this large briefly draws attention away from the decisions Mafu made when he believed he understood Marco’s scheme.
Those decisions matter because the film has taken time to show whom their sales affect. Its heartfelt resolution brings Mafu back into focus, though I remained most interested in the earlier, less easily settled question of how long he could keep accepting money while recognizing the harm behind it.
God Bless You, Mr. Kopu world-premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2026. The satirical dark comedy-thriller follows a struggling Tongan immigrant in New Zealand who enters a high-risk partnership with a charismatic American door-to-door salesman.
Where to Watch God Bless You, Mr. Kopu (2026) Online
Full Credits
Title: God Bless You, Mr. Kopu
Distributor: Velvet Moss, Feisty Dame Productions, Umbrella Entertainment
Release date: September 14, 2026 (Toronto International Film Festival)
Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes (102 minutes)
Director: Alex Liu
Writers: Alex Liu
Producers and Executive Producers: Roxi Bull, Tania Chambers, Simon Rex
Cast: Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, Simon Rex, Grace Palmer
The Review
God Bless You, Mr. Kopu
Alex Liu makes Mafu and Marco’s sales visits fun to watch, then lets the cost of each success creep in. Simon Rex’s persuasive swagger and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s lingering unease keep the partnership alive through the film’s shift from comedy to crime. The late revelation is exciting, though it briefly pulls attention from Mafu’s choices. I was most taken with the earlier question it leaves behind: how does he keep selling once he knows who pays for his success?
PROS
- Strong contrast between the two lead performances
- Sales scenes that gradually change the film’s tone
- Mafu’s moral conflict grows from specific choices
- Dream sequences deepen the unease
CONS
- The cultural conflict is sometimes stated too plainly
- The late twist briefly distracts from Mafu’s decisions
