In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant 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 five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped 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 individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
