In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent 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 indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
