During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory 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 Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
