Once Were Warriors

A very stark film about the Maori people, who in the civilized world only remember how they were a nation of proud warriors. Some have not lost their pride, inherited from their ancestors to this day, others drown their frustrations in alcohol. The performances are brilliant, especially Temuera Morrison's as the neurotic drunk and bully, when I first saw him I thought, "Oh my God, where did they get this nutter? He can't possibly be an actor!" The whole film gives the viewer a feeling of incredible authenticity, and it opened Lee Tamahori the doors to Hollywood. (04.01.2003)

Tamahori's directorial debut, exploring the nature of (in)human brutality and instinctive primitivism, may indeed portray the indigenous people without unnecessary embellishment, as well as avoiding total demonization, but it certainly doesn’t deliver a comprehensive picture. The blood of the slaves in a fistfight with the "warriors" may hold up, but a more skillful mix of characters would have helped, given that a confrontation at the level of spouses, where there is clearly a "caste" of the ruling man and woman in the position of near-slave, could have done without the analysis of the relationships inherited from the ancestors. Fortunately, Tamahori makes up for this with an unvarnished view of the offspring, who form the only common element in this unequal relationship. Therefore, the greatest strength of the film lies not in the barroom brawls of hot heads and big muscles but is brought out most wonderfully in the scene of the family outing, when the mother recounts to the children meeting their father and the subsequent aftermath, and especially the utterly emotionally overwhelming impact that is initiated by the tree with the swing. This is the strongest and most important thing the film has to offer. Together they resolve nothing and the "cathartic" conclusion deserves a longer discussion. However, the feeling that "this is how things work in some places, not only on the other side of our planet" is more than unpleasant. (18.09.2006)

Once Were Warriors is a grim look into the peripheral life of a socially disadvantage and violent family. The suffering of the purest and best characters here must end in death in order to open the eyes of their loved ones and force them to make essential decisions about their lives. This is a very well acted and directed drama, and after seeing it, your own life will look like a fairy-tail dream in the clouds. Lee Tamahori enhances the depressing atmosphere and the feeling of helplessness with a dark rumbling in the background and frequent shots from below, when all of the psychological terror comes at us with the same intensity as at the suffering protagonists (the scene of tearing up the diary just before the key scene of the film). Despite all of the film’s positive aspects and the respectably fulfilled artistic ambitions, however, I found the actual plot to be somewhat absurd. What would have been the first important twist of a more well-developed film becomes the conclusion of Once Were Warriors after a drawn-out 100 minutes. But if I lived in similarly hopeless, oppressive conditions as the main protagonists, these feelings of absurdity would probably be very quickly replaced by painful identification with reality. And this film would have been an inspiration for me in my life. (05.08.2002)

Cruel reality, without exaggerations, diversions, American pathos or making heroes out of people who simply aren't. On a spiritual level, an incredibly powerful and heavy film that throws you into a depression not by a false pressure or the depiction of physical suffering, but simply by the fact that you believe everything that happens in it, every tear, wound, scream, and twist. The basic story and the conspicuous tediousness of some scenes prevent me from appreciating it sufficiently in terms of cinematic art, but that was not the point here. This is mostly about breathtaking performances, about the human conscience and about the slums of New Zealand, where I don't think anyone would want to grow up. Hats off. 85% (30.09.2013)