During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive 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 Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
