In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang 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 learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir 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 nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
