In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production 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 filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
