In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet 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 humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, 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 poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
