During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson 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 serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
