During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence 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 verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori 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 gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book 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 Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
