In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget 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 its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
