During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
