During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, 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 is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, 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 Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances 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 had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
