Review of Once Were Warriors (1994) by Andrew Y — 25 Sep 2009

Metion this movie to any new zealander they will tell you how powerful this film is. For this kiwi viewing this flim on tv a few months ago I was amazed at how realistic the acting was thanks to kiwi legands like Rena Owen , Cliff Curtius and Temeura Morrison. This movie has become somthing of a new zealand icon in this nations pop culture and just recenlty in a show counting down New Zealands 100 greatest pop cultre moments ( hosted by Rhys Draby of Flight of The Concords) this flim was rank about number 4 or 5. Now this film was based on Alan Duffs contravisal novel about a lower income Maori Family been tornen apart by the Drink and Domestic abuse.

With the book and the film made it cerated more awarnes of alot of social issues in New Zealand like how a vast majority of our indgions people are living in poverty and the presents of domestic in New Zealand. Today about 10 women are killed every year in NZ due to dometic abuse and quite a few childern as well.

Due to this Films extreme realisum its porably the best example of the terror of domestic abuse anywere in the world.

Now to give you any idea of how well portyaed this movie is the actor Temeura Morrison ( jake heke or aka Jake the Muss) required a lot of conculing after this movie was completed.

The one thing I feel that this movie was robbed of was an Oscar. At least this movie will forever live on in new zeland pop culture. I probaly should add when I viewed this movie on network televison they were constanly screen the Its not ok anti domestic abuse campaign dedicted to stamping out this social problem in new zealand.