Once Were Warriors

A huge hit in New Zealand, where it surpassed JURASSIC PARK's box-office take, ONCE WERE WARRIORS is a fairly conventional look at lives blighted by poverty and cultural disenfranchisement. Still, it's hard-hitting stuff, and a welcome antidote to the sentimentalized picture of the Maoris--New Zealand's indigenous people--in 1993's THE PIANO.

The film opens with an image of New Zealand countryside that seems too placid and beautiful to be true. It is: the shot widens, and we're looking at a billboard in the middle of a squalid slum inhabited by urbanized Maoris. Proud, stubborn Beth Heke (Rena Owen) is making the best of a bad marriage to sexy, brutal ne'er-...