‘Once Were Warriors’ (R)

BEFORE A screening of "Once Were Warriors" last year, director Lee Tamahori warned Toronto Festival moviegoers about the violence they were about to witness. He begged them to stick with the film, a story about a family beset by domestic strife in New Zealand's Maori underclass. By the end, Tamahori promised, the audience would appreciate the brutality in context.

His advice, which planted the seed for a highly positive reception that September night, is well worth mentioning here. Assessed only for its moments of barbarity, "Warriors" is something to avoid at all costs. But reserve judgment until this raw, uncompromising working-class saga is over, and you might find yourself unforgettably moved -- and grateful for the experience.

Beth Heke (Rena Owen), a spirited housewife, has stuck with her abusive husband, Jake, for 18 years. Jake (Temuera Morrison), whose intimidating bulk and demeanor suggest a Maori Mike Tyson, has a volcanic personality that builds as he drinks deep into the night with his barroom buddies, then explodes at home.

Beth, who likes a rowdy good time herself, frequently takes the brunt of Jake's raw, unchallenged machismo. This means taking his blows and satisfying his animalistic urges. She's tethered by her fear but she's also hopelessly attracted to him. Life at the Heke household is a regular round of heavy partying, drunken slugfests and sullen silence in the morning. Caught in this cycle of despair are the couple's five angry, emotionally damaged children.

Beth and Jake are merely part of a culturally displaced slum community that is raised on male domination, alcoholism, illiteracy, poverty and crime. (Outside this neighborhood, New Zealand's white society seems like a distant planet, represented only by marauding, contemptuous policemen.) A particularly tragic turn of events forces Beth to finally decide to do something about her life -- and her children's well-being.

There's a documentary-like realism to the movie, thanks to its authentic Maori cast and Tamahori's semi-improvisational approach to direction. Tamahori also gives everyone a sympathetic, realistic dimension. Jake (superbly performed by Morrison) may seem like a one-dimensional Minotaur, a terrifying presence whose labyrinth leads from home to bar and back again, but he has an infectiously winning side too.

"Once Were Warriors," adapted by Riwia Brown from a novel by Alan Duff, may be set in a world that's superficially exotic, but its dark themes apply to the oppressed all over the world, whether they be East Germans in Berlin, Native Americans in South Dakota, or the American woman from San Pedro, Calif., who recently threw her two infant children, then herself, into a channel off Long Beach harbor -- apparently because of an abusive husband. Watch this film and see your neighborhood, or one close to you.

ONCE WERE WARRIORS (R) -- Contains scenes of disturbing brutality and violent sexual assault.