In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming 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 directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
