In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor 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: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
