During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
