In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
