During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made 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 Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
