Cheap Once Were Warriors [IMPORT] (DVD) (Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison) (Lee Tamahori) Price

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Customer Reviews of Once Were Warriors [IMPORT]

The Clashing of Cultures Brings Ruin
ONCE WERE WARRIORS is a gem of a movie that received little play in the United States. And that is a shame since this film is one of the most brutal and unforgettable exposes of the disintegration of a native culture after debilitating contact with a colonially suffocating one. Director Lee Tomahori presents a poverty-stricken subculture of the Maori tribe in New Zealand, one in which the dissolution of the formerly strong tribal bonds and rituals becomes increasingly evident in each scene. Part of the appeal of this movie is that the theme of cultural sabotage is often repeated in many cultures--and not just in third world cultures that accept Burger King rather than their own gods as a worthy pantheon.

Temuera Morrison is Jake, a brute of a husband who finds that his place in society has been undercut by a Western civilization that seems bent on putting Guess jeans on all the natives. Jake finds it difficult to hold a job so he spends his days drinking in pubs with his mates. He brawls, he drinks, he abuses his long suffering wife Beth (Rena Owen) whenever his self-esteem dips below a critical level. Beth tries hard to maintain some semblance of normalcy, but with one son in prison, another seeking to join a gang, and a teenage daughter trying to face the issues of her own burgeoning sexuality in a male-dominant society, she finds this job impossible. She loves Jake, but she hates what he has become, and there is no easy solution.

Nearly all the major characters are blighted in some way by their inability to adjust to their newer and low-class status in a Western culture than relegates their own to disrepute. Much of the film is filled with the raw violence of bar room brawls, ugly scenes of domestic abuse, and rape. All of this violence serves to underscore the need of a disenfranchised people to look within themselves to find the pride and respect that once marked them as warriors. Most fail, but the few who do not suggest that the recovery of basic human decency transcends cultures and borders so that any who see this marvelous movie can take heart that brutes like Jake are dinosaurs, eventually to be replaced by adaptable survivors like Beth. The closing scene of Beth's son,now fully engaged in his gang's ritualistic dance of discipline, punctuates this most basic of human desires.

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Brutal and uncompromising
I thought I'd seen some disturbing films, but nothing prepared me for this. A social awareness movie as hardcore as it gets, this is a truly bleak and sobering depiction of a Mowrai community in New Zealand on the edge of disintegration. The film follows one family in which the father is an alcoholic who can barely hold down a decent job and thinks nothing of taking his frustrations out on his wife. The sons, meanwhile, have either joined gangs or are involved in skirmishes with the local authorities. The daughter's talent at writing and reading, the only ray of hope in a devastated family, passes unacknowledged by those around her until she decides to take her future into her own hands...There are no attempts here to couch the violence in Tarantino-esque post-modern designer chic, just a truly honest and brutally unflinching account of a community with their backs against the wall. The film's extreme scenes of wife beating, violence and rape make it almost unbearable to watch in places; emotionally, it packs a punch quite unlike anything else around. Ocassionally it's harrowing dynamics push the film slightly too far; judge the appeal for yourself.

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Film Of The Century!
Without discussing the content of this film, suffice it to say that the acting is absolutely phenomenal! The male and female leads are enormously talented!It's real ,it's raw, and I think that is the best example of acting that I have ever seen