In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise 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 fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring 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 care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir 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
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing 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, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
