During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, 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, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir 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 Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
