Sorry, but instead of spending all that time in the movie trying to make us feel sorry for the hostage taker, how about showing us something about the actual victim - Geisa, the girl who was shot.
I guess the filmmakers weren't interested in that.
"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."
Well, I agree that her story deserved a little time too, but it's his story that helps to fuel the point they're trying to make. What needs to be learned from the experience is how to prevent it from happening again, and unless you want to take the sociopathic route of exterminating all the desperate poor who live in the city, what needs to happen is to start treating them like human beings and maybe find a way to HELP. It's easy to distance one's self from a person like that if you can't identify with his experiences, and it' so much easier to judge them because of that; and it's because of this that the violence will continue if something isn't done.
If telling her story had helped get that point across then I'm sure they would have included it, I'm kind of curious about her too, though