In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second 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 Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
