In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming 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 sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
