In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
