During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; 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 gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise 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 taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
