In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent 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 writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt 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 industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe 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 mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
