In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another 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 self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers 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.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.