During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, 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 film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film 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. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
