During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His 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, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
