During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson 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 thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
