In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor 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.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device 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 its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
