During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
