In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, 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; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
