During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
