During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
