In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent 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
But the high point, 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 installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
