During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A 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 haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
