In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
