‘Once Were Warriors’ (R)

"Once Were Warriors" is an uncompromising, emotionally draining drama that presents the urbanization of New Zealand's Maori as a cultural disaster, one that is mirrored in the shards of a shattering marriage. This explosive first film by director Lee Tamahori focuses on the transformation of a battered wife, but its story is fueled by the machismo of the disenfranchised Maori male.

Warriors deprived of societal and spiritual guidance all too often wind up like Jake Heke (Temuera Morrison), an unemployed bruiser who spends most of his time drinking with his cronies at the neighborhood pub. If his wife, Beth (Rena Owen), questions his wasting money on booze, Jake answers with his fists.

The morning after, he rubs salt in her terrible wounds by complaining of her ugliness. But in time the bruises fade, the swelling subsides and Jake seduces her all over again. The Hekes would know all the stops of "A Streetcar Named Desire," though Jake's volatility and boxer's build also recall another cinematic Jake, in "Raging Bull."

The hard-drinking Beth is no angel herself. Indeed, she puts spin on the ugly cycle in one of the movie's most brutal scenes. When Jake orders her to make an omelet for a drinking buddy, the tipsy Beth literally eggs him on by smashing the carton. Jake retaliates violently as the kids cower in their beds upstairs.

In spite of everything, Beth is still sexually attracted to her husband, but she is beginning to realize what drink and violence are doing to her children. Although one son joins a gang and another is taken to a state home for delinquent boys, there is still hope for her three youngest children, especially the luminous and vulnerable 13-year-old Grace (Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell). As Beth's nurturing instincts grow and her lust wanes, Jake becomes threatened and drives the family nearer the edge of destruction.

The actors, many of them of European-Maori descent, are wonderful to look at. They also deliver authoritative yet sympathetic performances that get at the roots, or rootlessness, of their characters. Owens is a Carmen of the kitchen sink as Beth -- as destructive in her way as Morrison's Jake, a warrior who cannot recognize, much less defeat, the enemy all around him.

Adapted from Alan Duff's gritty bestseller, Maori writer Riwia Brown's screenplay does not flinch from the ugliness of the Hekes' home life. It does, however, hold out some hope for Beth's future and her children's, but only if they return to their Maori homeland. The lesson, as in Australia's "The Fringe Dwellers": Colonialism continues to poison indigenous peoples.

Once Were Warriors is rated R for profanity, graphic scenes of domestic abuse and drug use.