In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
