warriors',

'Once were warriors', and now a sequel

HER name is Nancy Brunning and you last saw her in the dreadful soap “Shortland Street” playing a nurse.

Now she’s set for international star dom on the back of her latest role in the New Zealand Maori drama “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?”

A sequel to the depressing and vio lent “Once Were Warriors” (and still New Zealand’s most profitable movie if you don’t count the French- Australian “The Piano”) the new movie premiered in Auckland last month to an audience weary of the hard right-wing politics of the author of the books the movies are based on, Alan Duff.

He is the darling of the free market here for the seemingly brutal ease with which he exposes a harsh “reality” of Maori people in New Zealand; down and out, losers, heavy drinkers and so very much into the ultimate mindless violence.

It is all built around the character created by Temuera Morrison - “Jake the Muss”.

On the strength of “Once Were Warriors” Morrison went off to Hollywood and ended up in a couple of lightweight flicks, at one point

sharing the screen with one of the big-breasted “Baywatch” babes. Now he is back in New Zealand and with Duff is rebuilding Jake the Muss, but this time as somebody becoming increas ingly troubled over his life and its violence.

The resulting film is grim to say the least and frankly is something of a puzzle to see how it is acceptable to dish up cliches, silly lines and plain nonsense, just so long as it is dressed up in Maoridom and Polynesian culture.

The attempted redemption of Jake turns not so much on his rejection of violence, but

the triumph of violence over, well, other violence. It is all a tad sickening.

That said, the effort by Nancy Brunning is outstanding.

She played Tania, girlfriend of one of Jake’s sons who gets killed right at the beginning of the movie. She joins up with another brother (played by strong new star Clint Eruera) to seek revenge.

The role is grubby and tragic but

Brunning, strongly and beautifully

Polynesian, brings to it dignity and strength that gives one hope that some day somebody will give her a decent role.

She told the Listener magazine that in the original scrip her character, Tania, was too passive, hiding behind wrap-around dark sunglasses.

“Tania’s spent years in the gang and I don’t think she knows who she really is any more, just who she is as a gang m 011... But I wanted to find a balance, to show her strength - that survival

thing.

Even though she’s a victim. I didn’t want people to write her off the moment they first saw her.” ■