In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
