In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe 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 Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
