During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its 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 filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
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; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
