In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male 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 is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors 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 all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
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 journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming 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 directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
