During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken 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 gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the 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 decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
