During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status 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 serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject 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 heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
