During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture 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 could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting 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 second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
