In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter 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 individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual double cliches. 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 director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
