During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
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 energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery 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 characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
