During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director 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 Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
