During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
