During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing 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 taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
