During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
