During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
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 assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
