An Auckland man has been found guilty of repeated domestic abuse likened to events in cult Kiwi movie Once Were Warriors.

In one of the worst assaults, Aucklander Haranui David Selwyn Harris, 27, smashed his partner in the face with a hammer, breaking her teeth.

Harris faced 51 abuse charges and a jury in the High Court at Auckland took three days to work through them.

In the end they found him guilty of 27 charges and not guilty of 23.

During the trial Harris' own lawyer Quentin Duff, the son of Once Were Warriors author Alan Duff, drew the parallel between his actions and the violent culture of the book and movie.

"When my father's book was turned into a movie it thrust domestic violence into the spotlight,'' Duff said in his closing address.

He said Harris "appears to fit the demographic of Once Were Warriors", but he urged the jury to resist resorting to such stereotypes when considering their verdict.

But the Crown said Harris was a man who used "unrestrained and callous violence on his female partner". He also attacked his two children.

"He is a jealous man with a bad temper. Violence was often sudden and unprovoked, sometimes it was for his own amusement," prosecutor Dale Dufty said.

Harris was found guilty of a series of violent assaults including slamming his partner's leg in a car door, attacking her with a spirit level and hitting her in the face with the hammer.

The attack with the hammer occurred in January 2008 when the woman interrupted Harris while he was playing video games.

Dufty said he struck her "square in the face with a hammer", breaking her teeth.

Harris was also found guilty of six assaults on his children and also of cruelty to them for making them witness his various assaults on their mother.

Despite his partner taking out protection orders against him, he repeatedly breached them and was found guilty for those breaches, and of two charges of interfering in the court process by threatening his partner to scare her into not testifying in court.

But jurors ruled him not guilty of other accusations such as cutting of his partner's hair and tying her hair around the tow-bar of his car, dragging her down the driveway.