During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, 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 maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
