During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
