During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film 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. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
