Picture of the week: A hobbled Derek Redmond finishing the 400 with the help of his father, Jim.
title: “Down And Out” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Lloyd Fitzgerald”
Adapted from an Alan Duff novel by playwright Riwia Brown, “Once Were Warriors” puts us in the shoes of Beth Heke (Rena Owen), a battered woman struggling to keep her family together and her children out of trouble. Her jobless giant of a husband, Jake (Temuera Morrison), spends his days guzzling beer with the boys and getting into fights, and throwing parties at home at night. Beth likes a drink and a song herself, and she obviously thinks her hunk of a husband is sexy, but the price is high: in his alcoholic rages, Jake bashes her to a bloody pulp. Domestic violence has never been more savagely portrayed on screen.
The whole family suffers the repercussions. One son joins a gang (the tattooed members resemble something from “The Road Warrior”). Another lands in a reform school, where he learns his first lessons in Maori pride. Thirteen-year-old Grace is raped by a family friend in her own home. The raw power of “Once Were Warriors” is undeniable. And Rena Owen, wired with nervous energy, makes a formidable heroine. She exudes an angry, earthy sensuality that brings Jeanne Moreau to mind. But the movie’s visceral bluntness is both its strength and its weakness: almost every point is hit square upon the nose. It’s not surprising that Tamahori has been signed to direct a Hollywood studio film: he knows how to work up an audience’s outrage. But for all its gritty urban details, the writing never ventures far from melodramatic formula. Beth’s big speeches are just that – speeches. The urban Maori milieu, however, is something we haven’t seen before, and the images stay with you. You can smell the beer on the barroom floor, taste the food in the Heke household and feel the fear in the air every time Jake lurches home, spoiling for a fight.
