During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
