During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. 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, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
