During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance 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 “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
