In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as 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 dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
