During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he 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 filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The 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, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.