During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, 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 older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making 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 masterpiece.
