In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson 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 serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
