In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller 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 characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status 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 decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device 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.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
