In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives 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 dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
