During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, 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 moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
