In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor 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 witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
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 Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
