In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, 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 gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, 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 in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director 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 Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming 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 second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
